Did Michelle Obama plagiarise 2008 speech from Stephen Covey?
Claims are spreading that First Lady Michelle Obama copied parts of her 2008 speech at the Democratic convention on a book by Stephen Covey titled “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.
Only days after accusations that Melania Trump stole parts of her recent speech at the 2016 Republican convention from Michelle Obama’s speech during the 2008 Democratic convention comes this rumour that claims Michelle – in turn – stole her 2008 convention speech from author Stephen Covey.
A meme, below, claims that Michelle Obama took a passage from Covey’s book almost verbatim.
There is only one sure means of success. Number one, work hard for what you want in life. Number two, treat your word as your bond and always do what you say you’re going to do. And number three, respect everyone and treat them with dignity even if you don’t know them or agree with them. And always, always, take the opportunity to pass the values on to the next generation.
However the claims that Michelle Obama stole that passage appear to be false, simply because we were unable to find that passage anywhere in Covey’s book – we searched for any of the phrases in a number of different online editions of Covey’s book, yet to no avail.
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The claim fails to state where in Covey’s book the words apparently are, or if the passage was worded slightly differently (we search for similar phrases yet still turned up no results.)
Given this, unless it can be specifically pointed out exactly which passage (and where it appears in the book) was apparently “borrowed” by Michelle Obama, the accusations have no merit and should not be circulated.
Related: Claims that Trump copied a tweet previously used by Obama in 2008 have been debunked here.
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