Califorlia Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom plagiarized an attack on Donald Trump on Friday evening, presenting work by a retired Air Force officer as if it were his own, and signing it with his name. Newsom later admitted the plagiarism, once caught.
The poem is a play on a famous poem by German Pastor Martin Niemöller about the Holocaust:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Last year, retired Air Force Col. Tom Moe, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, recited his own version of Niemöller’s poem, in a video that was posted to YouTube by the presidential campaign of Ohio Gov. John Kasich:
As the Sacramento Bee notes, Newsom “changes the word ‘must’ to ‘should’ and ‘Hispanic immigrants’ to ‘undocumented immigrants.’ Otherwise, it is virtually identical to Moe’s paraphrase.”
Newsom later acknowledged that he should have credited Moe:
Last week, Newsom was scathing in his mockery of Donal Trump’s wife, Melania, after it emerged that several lines in her speech at the Republican National Convention had been lifted from a speech by First Lady Michelle Obama:
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, will be published by Regnery on July 25 and is available for pre-order through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.