Melania Trump “kerfuffle” finally cleared up

They hope.

After two days of evasion, with surrogates saying the plagiarism didn’t matter or it didn’t happen — the campaign didn’t have one, clear message on the issue — with the RNC chairman and other Republicans saying someone in the campaign staff should be fired, the Trump Campaign issued a press release on the matter.

It was a speechwriter. Meredith McIver took the bullet for Melania — and Donald — Trump, saying she spoke with the candidate’s wife over the phone and discussed what and whom Melania liked and one of the people Mrs. Trump admires is Michelle Obama. McIver said she wrote some things down that Melania said over the phone, tweaked with the verbiage a little and voila! Instant controversy.

McIver said she didn’t check Mrs. Obama’s speeches before, during or after writing the speech to see if there would be an issue with plagiarizing.

In her letter McIver said she offered her resignation to the family for the trouble she caused, but the Trumps magnanimously refused to accept it. Those darn Trumps. So … tolerant and forgiving.

On the other hand, professional speechwriters Matthew Scully and John McConnell were thrown under the bus early Tuesday morning when it was revealed they had sent Melania Trump a draft of her speech well before Monday night.

But then their draft was made public and none of the offending paragraphs were in their draft … which then sent the controversy spiraling even further out of control as speechwriters, family members, the de facto campaign chairman (Paul Manafort) and surrogates all adding competing and contradicting explanations of how and why Mrs. Trump’s speech had lifted so much of Mrs. Obama’s speech.

Meredith McIver’s letter does admit there was some plagiarizing, however innocent it may have been, so Paul Manafort was incorrect in suggesting there weren’t any plagiarized sections in Melania Trump’s speech.

The guy who is supposed to be managing this campaign apparently has no clue what’s going on within the campaign — or is at least at odds with the Trump Family. If the campaign is still dealing with these kinds of issues, and still trying to unite the party behind their candidate for president, it has to give pause to people still on the fence about who to vote for in November.

You have to hand it to The Donald though. He stayed off Twitter until they figured out what to do about “Melania-Gate.” Early Wednesday morning he finally tweeted, “All press is good press.” Um … okay …

And then there was the Tuesday Night fights … err … witch-hunt, as the Hillary Clinton Campaign called it. It was hard to find a speaker who would make an affirmative case for their presidential candidate. Instead, they tried to unite the party with their hatred for Hillary Clinton, a staple of the GOP since 1992. The crowd in the Quicken Loans Arena loved it, chanting, “LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!”

And others yelling things far more sinister. “Hillary Clinton should be put on the firing squad and shot.”

Officially the theme for Tuesday Night was “Make the Economy Great Again,” but from listening to most of the speeches, the theme was “Let’s Keep Hatred As Our Calling Card!”

Chris Christie, putting Hillary Clinton on a mock trial, getting the crowd to yell, “GUILTY!” Whenever he accused Clinton of some wrong. She’s guilty for signing the Iran nukes deal, even though it was her successor, John Kerry who was instrumental in getting that deal made. Hillary Clinton is responsible for the young girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria, even though it took place two years after Clinton left her job as Secretary of State.

He blamed the rise of Putin in Russia on Hillary Clinton — despite the fact that President George W. Bush told us in 2001, “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”

• *Bold mine

It goes on. Thirteen of the speeches said little to nothing about Donald Trump, positive or otherwise, but denounced Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, accusing them of all sorts of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan could barely bring himself to mention the candidate by name, same with his former colleague and current Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson. The current Attorney general of Arkansas Leslie Rutledge, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Mitch McConnell, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — they were all there to bash Hillary Clinton and they soaked themselves luxuriously in all the hatred. But little or no mention of their presidential candidate.

Except for McConnell. A lot of people left the hall when he started to speak. Maybe if they had Jon Stewart do his impression of McConnell people would have stayed in their seats.

Tiffany Trump, Donald’s daughter with his second wife Marla, gave a heartfelt speech and really, she was the best of the night. With Tiffany her brother Donald, Jr., Dana White, President of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a couple others, there was scant reasons given for why Donald Trump would be a good president.

Ben Carson spoke … I’m snoring already. Like he did throughout his campaign, Carson had heads and eyeballs spinning. He connected Clinton to Saul Alinsky and then connected Alinsky — and by inference Hillary Clinton — to Lucifer.

All the nutbars are on parade this week in the Quicken Loans Arena.

Tonight we’ll hear from Ted Cruz in a prime hour, even though he won’t be endorsing Donald Trump.

Along with Cruz: Senator Marco Rubio, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Newt and Callista Gingrich, Eric Trump, and of course Indiana Governor Mike Spence, who is expected to accept his party’s nomination to be the candidate for vice president.

So far the Republican Party is the party of ineptitude, fraud and hatred. The base of the GOP will love all the hatred, but the question is: how will the small percentage of undecided voters view that witch-hunt? Are they going to be so pro-hatred? Not likely.

Day 3 of this convention: the popular Republican governor of this state is still not in attendance (and he is still being vilified by the Trump Campaign) and the candidate’s wife is not in Cleveland. Trump and Pence made a very public arrival by helicopter Wednesday morning with family members piling out of the copter with the two candidates — but no Melania Trump.

So far no one has tried to spin that little detail, yet. The day is still young though.

Party Unity: maybe the Republican Party will get some before their circus is over.

•••• •••• ••••• •••• ••••

Just as this was getting prepared Cleveland riot police rushed to the scene to break up a brawl. MSNBC said one of the groups involved in the alleged fight was the Communist Party. I was a member of the Communist Party once … sort of … in a “I’ll drink your beer with you” kind of way. They kicked me out.