About that … Michelle Obama finally reacted to Melania Trump‘s Republican National Convention plagiarism controversy while appearing on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, September 20.
Back in July, the businesswoman, 46, faced backlash following her speech at the RNC for her husband, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. She appeared to lift a few sentences from the speech that FLOTUS, 52, made at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
![Michelle Obama](/wp-content/uploads/michelle-obama-zoom-2a6c7e6c-188e-4d47-b7ad-9f1c9bb80d71.jpg?w=1000&quality=86&strip=all)
Colbert, 52, was met with laughter when he brought up the scandal on Tuesday. “Melania Trump was criticized for using what turned out to be a portion of your speech. But do you have any sympathy? Because there are people around her creating things, and you know, I have sympathy for her. Do you understand how that might be sympathetic, for what happened to her?” the CBS host asked the first lady.
Obama quipped: “Yeah, that was tough.”
Colbert also asked if she sympathizes with people who have to “stand by the person running for president.”
“No,” she replied. “You have to be in it. If you’re in it, and if you don’t agree, you should have agreed before they ran. Bottom line is, if you didn’t agree with what Barack [Obama] was saying, I would not support his run. So I stand there proudly, and I hope they are too, standing with their spouses proudly. So, no, no sympathy.”
![Melania Trump, wife of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, addresses delegates on the first day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.](/wp-content/uploads/melania-trump-zoom-a6ff6db7-3859-4781-91f2-3158cd9033eb.jpg?w=1000&quality=86&strip=all)
As previously reported, Meredith McIver, one of the Trump organization writers, took the blame for Melania’s RNC remarks. The former Celebrity Apprentice host accepted her apology and rejected her resignation.
“In working with Melania Trump on her recent first lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people. A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama. Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech,” McIver explained at the time. “I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches,” she continued. “This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.”
Watch the videos above!