Video: GOP Strategist Brings Up My Little Pony In Melania Trump Speech Debacle

By Stephen Gossett in News on Jul 19, 2016 7:18PM

Getty Images / Photo: Chip Somodevilla

In what might be the most egregious case of the defense being as bad as the crime, the Republican National Convention Chief Strategist Sean Spicer has cited none other than My Little Pony as vindication against accusations that Melania Trump plagiarized portions of her speech on Monday night at the Republican National Convention from Michelle Obama. You read that correctly: My Little Pony—specifically the animated TV series that brought the term "Bronie" into our lives.

As seen in the video below, Spicer invokes Twilight Sparkle. How his face stays as straight as it does is as gobsmacking as what comes out of his mouth.

Tara Strong, who voices Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, was unmoved.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this might only be the beginning of the pop-culture defense. (We already saw the Rickroll sprinkling.)

The sad thing is, this argument is not all that terribly far off from some of the other justifications we’ve heard Republicans make in the wake of the speech. Here’s Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey arguing on The Today Show that since “93 percent” of the speech differed, that would make charges of plagiarism baseless.

The copy-and-paste syndrome is hardly new to politics, as the Guardian pointed out, but My Little Pony? Maybe we should take small comfort in such relative innocuousness. After all, when a Trump usually recycles ideas, they tend to come from much darker corners.