Wayback Machine captures Melania Trump’s deleted internet bio

Melania Trump’s personal website is now gone from the internet — but is preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine — after a Huffington Post reporter and other news outlets began questioning elements of the would-be First Lady’s biography.

Yesterday Christina Wilkie, a national political reporter for the Huffington Post, published a story noting that Melania Trump’s elaborate website, www.melaniatrump.com, which existed as recently as July 20, now redirects to the Trump Organization’s official website. The removal of the website followed questions about a biography that appeared on it, that claimed  that Melania Trump had “earned a degree in design and architecture at University in Slovenia.”

Many media outlets have followed suit, writing that the website has now disappeared.

Today Melania Trump tweeted that the website was taken down because  “it does not accurately reflect my current and professional interests.”

Screenshot 2016-07-28 13.13.40

 

Wilkie and other reporters had questioned whether Trump truly obtained those degrees from the university. The inquiries took on new potency after she was accused of possible plagiarism in her speech before the Republican National Convention last week. The campaign has not answered questions about the biography. Snopes.com has reported that there is no “University of Slovenia.”

Meanwhile, Melania’s original biography is preserved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which crawls websites to create a historical archive. The most recent snapshot was taken on July 20 — see the screenshot below.

Screenshot 2016-07-28 13.00.56

 

The Political TV Ad Archive is tracking and archiving political ads in the 2016 elections. In addition, we’ve set up a special Archive-It collection to track candidates’ and political organizations’ social media websites here, with more 320 million captures to date.

Cross posted on the Political TV Ad Archive. July 29: quote from Melania Trump’s defunct website corrected.

9 thoughts on “Wayback Machine captures Melania Trump’s deleted internet bio

  1. Robert

    It doesn’t say “University OF Slovenia.” It says “at University IN Slovenia. Can’t I go ANYPLACE on the Internet without being plagued by hysterical shills foaming at the mouth about this stupid election? P.S. I think both candidates are equally unacceptable.

  2. J.D.

    All hail the Wayback Machine! — Making sure that nobody on the Internet can ever say: “it never happened.” <3

  3. Tom Gally

    The New York Times has published an op-ed piece about a blog that has disappeared from the Internet, taken down by Google because of unspecified violations of its Terms of Service agreement:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/opinion/sunday/the-blog-that-disappeared.html

    I tried to find archived versions of the blog (http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/) on the Wayback Machine but ran into redirects that ended up nowhere. Does the IA have any comments about this issue?

  4. Lorraine Pilarski

    I think it’s time to reveal the truth about what Melania
    Is telling the public. Pleas seems like there is a double standard
    For Trump & Hillary. Trump can say whatever he wants but OMG
    Let Hillery say something and it is blow out of proportion.

  5. John Rigali

    I’m glad that Internet Archive is fulfilling its mission, but this news article seems to be another attack on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It seems hypocritical to me that the spouse of the American presidential candidate for the Republican party is scrutinized for bad behavior while the spouse of the American presidential candidate for the Democratic party is exempted.

  6. Martin Babin

    Sharing to FB doesn’t work correctly. The quotes fail to appear, the ‘download file’ is almost completely obscured and once you open the file you can’t ‘escape’ unless you page back.

  7. You're Idiots

    “at University” is a typical use of English outside the USA (i.e., in Europe and the British Commonwealth). It doesn’t mean that she specifically studied at an institution by the name of “University of Slovenia”, but rather that she simply studied architecture and design WHILE in university. It doesn’t imply that she attended any specific institution, nor that she actually finished a degree (though she may have, I don’t know). Please learn to speak and write your own language properly before editorializing.

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