Donald Trump Jr. Learns Why 'Please Pass The Ketchup' Isn't Plagiarism

Donald Trump Jr. on Thursday accused President Obama of plagiarizing him in Obama's keynote speech Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention.

The Trumps apparently still haven't gotten over Melania Trump's plagiarism of Michelle Obama from last week's GOP convention and how it stole much of the spotlight from Donald Trump Sr.

Rather than let it go (after a week), the younger Donald accused the president of the United States, one of the great orators in American history, of stealing this line: "That is not the America I know."

That, of course, is a bit like accusing someone of plagiarism because you were the first to utter, "Please pass the ketchup."

But let's play this out.

"That is not the America I know," is not merely a fairly common phrase among political speakers.

Little Trump did use a version of that line in his GOP convention speech.

But if Obama plagiarized the line from Trump Jr., then Trump Jr. had to first plagiarize the line from Obama, who has used a version of it at least twice before.

Speaking in Cleveland in 2010, Obama said, "That is not the America we believe in." And in 2012 in Michigan, he said, "That's the America I know."

And before that, Obama plagiarized the line from George W. Bush who, after 9/11, said, "That's not the America I know" about women who cover their heads being afraid to go outside.

The Washington Post reported that the first documented use of the phrase in the LexisNexis database came from George H.W. Bush in 1992, when he said, "And that's not the America that you and I know."

Once it was clear to Trump Jr. that his attempt to turn the tables had failed, he went to what's apparently the new Trump family defense: Come on, it was just a joke!