Photo: AP

The Trump campaign today issued an incredible denial over Melania Trump’s clearly plagiarized speech so demented there’s no way it came from anyone but themselves.

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort this morning praised Melania’s convention speech, which contained several passages directly lifted from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech, before blaming the whole thing on Hillary Clinton.

“I thought Melania Trump hit it out of the park when she talked about her love of family, the feeling of an immigrant that comes to this country and succeeds,” Manafort said this morning in an interview with CNN. “And I thought that the feeling she has towards her husband and her depiction of the real Donald Trump came through loud and clear.”

Which is, unintentionally, true: Melania’s plagiarism was perhaps the most pure depiction of “the real Donald Trump” so far this campaign. But the best part of Manafort’s denial was yet to come.

“There’s no cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech. These are common words and values that she cares about her family, things like that,” he said. “I mean, she was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think that she would be cribbing Michelle Obama’s words is crazy. This is once again an example of when a women threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down. It’s not going to work.”

Pretty crazy...