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Melania Trump blames 'opposition' for news a 'Be Best' pamphlet was recycled from earlier programs

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Yes, yes, we're all having a good laugh at Melania Trump's expense.

First lady Melania Trump’s anti-cyberbullying campaign brochure was largely recycled from an Obama-era publication in 2014, with most of the material copied over verbatim. [...]

[T]he document copies sections almost word-for-word from a FTC pamphlet published in January 2014 as part of the agency’s “Net Cetera” campaign, which began under President Barack Obama in 2009. After tweaking some language and graphics and adding an introduction from the first lady, the White House uploaded the new document, “Talking With Kids About Being Online,” to its website as the only external resource for Trump’s new Be Best website.

Aside from the rather awkward catchphrase of Melania's new Be Best campaign to stop kids from, um, not being best, this has led some to titter about her program perhaps being another instance of the Trump family plagiarizing from other, better political voices. This is unfair; it's almost certainly not her fault.

What likely happened, instead, is that Melania Trump worked with government functionaries in the FTC to craft her new initiative, upon which they listened politely and then churned out the bare minimum necessary to satisfy the White House. You want a pamphlet? Sure, we already have that lying around, it just needs a few updates because smartphones look different nowadays. Here ya go. Can we go now?

After BuzzFeed News inquired about the content of the booklet, Be Best's website changed the language describing it from "a booklet by First Lady Melania Trump and the FTC" to "a FTC booklet, promoted by first lady Melania Trump" (emphasis added). Grisham and Wood did not immediately respond to request for comment on the change.

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