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Rachel Maddow reported on Monday that Senator Rand Paul may have plagiarized a recent speech where several lines about the movie Gattaca appeared to be taken "basically verbatim" from Wikipedia without any attribution.
Then on Tuesday, Buzzfeed reported that Paul had plagiarized another speech in June, where he did the very same thing with the movie "Stand and Deliver."
Fusion's Jorge Ramos finally questioned Paul on the issue, much to Maddow's delight, but now Maddow is claiming that is possible Paul "does not understand what plagiarism is."
"I think it was very clear that the plot line was not something I created," the senator said in the interview with Ramos. "I didn't claim that I created the movie Gattaca."
He then went on to point the finger at Maddow, saying that she is not an "objective news source" and has been "spreading hate" on him for years.
"Senator, you can call me whatever you want," she said after showing the clip. "Trust me, I have been called worse."
Maddow, although clarifying that she does not "spread hate" for the Senator, still said that his response was "absolutely and provably not true."
“You did not borrow plot lines from these movies, you read the Wikipedia page out loud. The point is that you seem to have a frequent habit of plagiarizing parts of your speeches, and perhaps that is explained by the fact that you do not understand what plagiarism means… Senator, someone else's published words ended up in your speech without attribution. How did that happen? Do you understand that that is a problem?"
Watch the video for the full clip.
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