Mr. Trump: Stop fighting Melania's critics and move on

By Silvio Canto, Jr.

On a scale of 1 to 10, this is 0.000001 among scandals.

In fact, Mrs. Trump's speech must have been a smash because the anti-Trumpies keep talking about plagarism.

I challenge anyone to go back and read convention speeches from the TV era – say, starting in 1960. You will find that most nominees say the same thing because they are appealing to the few independents still standing at this time of the year.

To be honest, I've heard many of these wife speeches going back to Mrs. Nixon. The speeches are pretty predictable:

My husband is a good man, a great father, a man who cares about you and will think about the voters every day in the Oval Office.

So let's drop this silly outrage, especially from people who don't see anything wrong with Hillary Clinton's emails or her role in the Benghazi affair.

At the moment, the Trump campaign is denying the obvious, or the lines from Mrs. Obama that overlap with Mrs. Trump.

Mr. Trump should say they looked back at other speeches and selected their favorite messages.

Turn this whole thing into a positive by praising Mrs. Obama's nice messages and reminding us how the Obamas ended up as dividers rather than uniters.

As Howard Kurtz wrote today:

Everyone knows the Trump campaign is allergic to apologies, but insisting that this was a mere coincidence is just inflaming the media coverage.

It is, of course, not that big a deal.

Melania is neither a politician nor a practiced public speaker. Although she claimed ownership of the Cleveland address in an interview, it’s clear that it was largely the work of speechwriters.

What, they thought no one would notice that the current first lady used some of the same phrases in 2008?

So in insisting that the story is bogus, campaign officials are actually giving it legs by prompting anchors and reporters to prove the case and to question why the Trump operation persists in its denials.