Melania Trump (third wife) was the main speaker at the Republican National Convention Monday
Parts of Melania Trump's speech bear similarities to a similar speech given by Michelle Obama in 2008
(CNN) — Donald Trump's presidential campaign doesn't plan to fire anybody or to take disciplinary action over the controversy surrounding Melania Trump's plagiarism of Michelle Obama, CNN learned Tuesday.
Trump's campaign hopes to simply move on without further addressing questions about the speech.
Helpers to the presumptive Republican nominee are scrambling to move past the controversy after a passage in Melania Trump's speech Monday night, which headlined the Republican National Convention's opening night, closely mirrored a portion of Michelle Obama's address to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
It's set off infighting and finger-pointing within Trump's campaign, and two sources told CNN that Donald Trump himself is furious about it.
Trump's aides chalked the controversy up to media bias and blamed Hillary Clinton's campaign -- even though the apparent plagiarism was discovered by an independent journalist and had gone viral before Clinton's allies and Democrats even weighed in.
In an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo on "New Day," campaign chairman Paul Manafort denied the allegations of plagiarism.
"To think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd," Manafort said.
Manafort said the words Melania used were not "cribbed" but are common words.
"There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values. She cares about her family," Manafort said. "To think that she'd be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy."
Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee's chief strategist, invoked "My Little Pony" in defending the speech in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
"Melania Trump said, 'the strength of your dreams and willingness to work for them.' Twilight Sparkle from 'My Little Pony' said, 'This is your dream. Anything you can do in your dreams, you can do now,' " Spicer said.
He also compared passages of Trump's speech with phrases from musicians John Legend and Kid Rock.
"I mean if we want to take a bunch of phrases and run them through a Google and say, 'Hey, who else has said them,' I can do that in five minutes," Spicer said. "And that's what this is."
However, Trump's campaign faced criticism even from allies, who largely blamed staffers -- not Melania Trump.
