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21st July 2016
08:46am BST

The pretty obvious plagiarism charge quickly caught on and the speech went viral, but the Trumps didn't do anything to quell the controversy.
Indeed, a statement released the next day only seemed to confuse matters more:
https://twitter.com/MELANIATRUMP/status/755288206430576640
Then to add to the craziness, Republican strategist Sean Spicer invoked My Little Pony in his defence of Mrs Trump's lifting of the First Lady's words.
https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/755455563979427840

It wasn't just that people doubted how much Meredith McIver had contributed to the speech. Some began to question whether or not "Meredith McIver" even actually existed.
Donald Trump's history of "inventing" people to take the fall for problems is legendary. In the most famous incidents, it's believed Trump rang reporters himself using the aliases "John Miller" or "John Barron" to give puff quotes about "Donald Trump". The US presidential hopeful has always denied this, even though voice recordings later emerged in which "Miller" and "Barron" sound suspiciously like the millionaire businessman.
The dodginess of this Meredith McIver story grew even more apparent for conspiracy watchers when it was noted that McIver's Facebook page had literally just been created yesterday.
The Independent notes that McIver also has no verified Twitter account and no LinkedIn profile.
However, she does appear to have "co-authored" several of Donald Trump's books with him, as a quick Amazon search shows.
WHAT IS HAPPENING?!
The #DoesMeredithMcIverExist story is likely going to rumble on for a while, because it's so utterly bizarre. In the meantime, we might as well have our fun with it.

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