The Question Everyone Is Asking About Trump's Speech Writer
Hold on to your hat — there's a new twist in the Donald Trump campaign.
It's no surprise that after Melania Trump gave a speech at the Republican National Convention that sounded identical to one previously given by Michelle Obama, people started to ask, "Who is going to get blamed for this?" On Wednesday, a woman named Meredith McIver stepped up.
But in a twist of M. Night Shyamalan proportions, the question is no longer "Will she get fired?" but is instead, "Does she even exist?"
The Case Against Meredith McIver Being Real
Meredith McIver is credited as the "in-house staff writer at the The Trump Organization," according to a listing in the online encyclopedia Everipedia. However, most of the entries on the page appear to have been added in the last 24 hours.
Furthermore, it's pretty clear that whomever created the page did so with their tongue firmly planted in cheek, considering the list of McIver's friends:
"I.P. Freely" is an old joke (say the name out loud if you're not getting it), and John Barron and John Miller are well-known aliases of Donald Trump.
I.P. Freely has since been removed from the list.
Her Amazon author page doesn't offer much help. She's co-written several books with Trump, but her page has no photo and no bio.
Finally, her page on the All American Speakers Bureau website has been deleted. As of writing, if you type her name in, you'll see this at the very bottom of the page.
However, when when you click on it, it redirects to the home page.
The New York Times researched McIver for a story about Melania Trump's speech.
"It was Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, who commissioned the speech from Mr. Scully and Mr. McConnell — and praised their draft. But Ms. Trump decided to revise it, and at one point she turned to a trusted hand: Meredith McIver, a New York City-based former ballet dancer and English major who has worked on some of Mr. Trump’s books, including 'Think Like a Billionaire.'"
However, they never actually interacted with her:
"It was not clear how much of a hand Ms. McIver had in the final product, and she did not respond to an email on Tuesday."
The Case for Meredith McIver Being Real
There's a photo of someone going around.
There's also a photo of speaker Diamond Donna Root posing with McIver on Root's website, with the caption "Donna Root with Meredith McIver, an executive with Trump International," as well as a photo of McIver in Trump's book "How to Get Rich."
Trump dedicates a paragraph to McIver in "How to Get Rich" on the acknowledgements page, in which he states:
"This book could not have been written without Meredith McIver, a writer of many talents. She served her apprenticeship in the New York City Ballet, worked on Wall Street, and for the past two years has been an executive assistant at The Trump Organization, stationed at a desk outside my office. As you know, my door is always open, so Meredith has heard everything, and she's taken good notes. She's gone a remarkable job of helping me put my thoughts and experiences on paper. I am tremendously grateful to her."
Then again, we know that Trump doesn't write his own books anyway.
Buzzfeed reports McIver is a registered Democrat, and Piers Morgan claims to have had "many dealings" with her.
The sheer amount of information on each side has Twitter users asking #DoesMeredithMcIverExist? Given the absurdity of the 2016 presidential race, not everyone is ready to believe that the answer is no.
[H/T Mashable]