Fact-checking: Did Donald Trump really take his 2017 speech from Legally Blonde?

Yukti Malhotra on July 31, 2024 at 4:14 PM

Donald Trump 2017 commencement speech Liberty University Legally Blonde speech

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Donald Trump’s 2017 commencement speech at Liberty University in May 2017 is making rounds on the internet again as it is claimed the words are taken out of Legally Blonde. But is that really true?

Donald Trump has found himself at the center of a renewed fiasco. The Republican candidate who was recently the target of an attempted assassination and whose Democratic opponent quit the presidential race, is now being questioned for one of his 2017 speeches. Trump is less than four months away from the US 2024 elections - which many astrologers believe he may win.

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Most recently, he's being going viral because of speech he gave years ago. Here’s what’s happening!

Donald Trump’s infamous 2017 commencement speech in question

Trump, who picked JD Vance as his running mate, was invited to Liberty University to deliver a commencement speech in May 2017. Two days after Trump delivered the speech to the graduating class of the university, Jimmy Fallon made a video montage to depict that Trump’s speech was taken out of the 2001 movie Legally Blonde, starring Reese Witherspoon.

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Part of Fallon’s show highlighted how Trump’s phrases were similar to that of Elle Woods—Witherspoon's character in Legally Blonde. The video is now making rounds on the internet again as people claim that Trump ‘stole’ his 2017 speech from Legally Blonde. According to The Express, the video that was shared on X this week has more than 10.5 million views and 1000 comments.

It gives the impression that Trump is telling the graduating class of 2017:

You must go forth into the world. Passion, courage in your conviction, most importantly, be true to yourself. I did it.

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Meanwhile, Witherspoon's character in the movie said:

We take our next steps into the world, it is with passion, courage of conviction, and most importantly, have faith in yourself. We did it.

Donald Trump’s 2017 speech is far from Legally Blonde’s speech

Many people have flocked to the comments section to talk about the similarities between the two speeches, but the reality is far from it. A report by Snopes confirms that Fallon’s TV montage used a few ‘cherry-picked moments’ from different parts of Trump’s speech at Liberty University to give the impression that it was taken out of Legally Blonde.

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While Fallon did it for the comic effects for his The Tonight Show, many people have taken it to be literal.

In reality, there are no striking similarities in the two speeches. Trump delivered a 32-minute, 3800-word speech compared to Witherspoon's 60-second speech with around 100 words. The transcript of the speech provided by Time reveals that Trump doesn’t use the words in the same order as shown in the viral video. Trump uses the word ‘passion’ once during his speech to say:

He [George Rogers] started a family, he discovered God’s plan for him and pursued that vision with all his might, pouring his passion into a tiny college in a place called Lynchburg, Virginia.

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Parts of his speech where he uses the same words as Legally Blonde speech are as follows:

Now you must go forth into the world and turn your hopes and dreams into action…

As long as you remember what you have learned here at Liberty, as long as you have pride in your beliefs, courage in your convictions and faith in your God, then you will not fail…

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