At a few minutes after midnight, Trump had tweeted one of his infamous errors — the type usually quickly deleted, replaced, and never spoken of again (by Trump, at least.) This time, though, the tweet was left up for some time, and when it was deleted, Trump acknowledged it, though in a context that appeared to pretend he had either tweeted it on purpose, or, at least, was claiming some sort of superiority for ‘confusing’ readers.
Shortly after midnight, Donald Trump used his personal Twitter account to tweet, “Despite the negative press covfefe,” cutting off immediately after inventing the new word.
In the morning, however, Trump did remove the tweet, replacing it with one that insinuated the error was a big puzzle to keep the American people on their toes.
Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe" ??? Enjoy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2017
People were already offering suggestions.
Urban Dictionary offered their take:
No one really knows yet, but the President of the United States of America used it so it must be a bigly important word. It must be YUGE somewhere as he knows all the best words.
Someone else guessed at how the term might translate into another language:
https://twitter.com/RuwaydaMustafah/status/869858895505838080
Many thought it sounded like a morning beverage.
I wake up only to find that the whole Internet has gone crazy. I swear, if #covfefe turns out to be a @SHO_TwinPeaks spoiler, I'm done. pic.twitter.com/611YOJptMM
— Sam Brinkmeyer (@Doubtfurious) May 31, 2017
Perhaps ‘covfefe’ was a bluff, someone pretending to have a good use for a not-so-hot Scrabble hand.
"How could anyone make a word out of these lousy letters?" #Covfefe pic.twitter.com/k1dopQ7Ipt
— Matt Horne (@thematthorne) May 31, 2017
Or maybe a reminder of more relevant Presidential gaffes.
https://twitter.com/jackTweets11/status/869865473302810625
It could also be another demonstration of the difference between this President and the last POTUS.
If Obama had tweeted #covfefe Fox would have had 24×7 coverage trying to prove it was a codeword for Muslims to overthrow the government.
— KillerTigger (@KillerTigger) May 31, 2017
Whatever it might mean, social media users assured that we could expect it to be defended in the most extreme ways.
#Covfefe is a word. PERIOD pic.twitter.com/lgLT8vuiIG
— TES (@southerntalker) May 31, 2017
However, in truth, it takes only context and the minimal skim of Trump’s tweets over the past couple of years to come to a conclusion about what ‘covfefe’ really means.
The media coverage this morning of the very average Clinton speech and Convention is a joke. @CNN and the little watched @Morning_Joe = SAD!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2016
Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2017
Thr coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost gas been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2017
Thank you Graham Ledger of the Daily Ledger @OANN for your really fair coverage and your great interview with Peter Roff of U.S. NEWS & W.R.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2015
Along with ‘media’ and ‘fake news,’ ‘coverage’ is a word Trump loves to use to describe how people are talking about him In this context, it’s probably safe to asume that Donald Trump had a typo on his way to complain that the American free press exists and was telling the truth about him again.
