Late last night, US President Donald Trump left the internet wide awake and speculating what the word “covfefe” means after he sent out a tweet that was incomplete and didn’t make sense and then left the tweet undeleted for hours, suggesting that maybe he did actually intend to tweet, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.” What?!?
The tweet was sent out around midnight
Trump posted the strange tweet at around midnight, so he obviously had something on his mind he wanted to share with the world regarding the “negative” coverage he’s given by the media, but he got halfway through getting it off his chest and probably fell asleep, since the tweet stayed on there for hours, leaving people baffled and sleepless as they both mocked the tweet and tried to decipher it.
It’s entirely possible Trump was meaning to type “constant negative press coverage,” since that’s what he and his administration receive and find themselves under fire from the media on a “constant” basis, but it’s not the media’s fault, it’s just the Trump administrations fault for doing terrible, terrible things.
But even if “covfefe” was supposed to be “coverage” before Trump drifted off to sleep, that still doesn’t explain what the second clause of the tweet was supposed to be, since “despite” suggests he was about to say what he’s managed to do in spite of being attacked by the press for the things he says and does, but he never did get to what exactly that was. That’s the speculation people should be talking about, but they leave that at the wayside because “covfefe” is a funny word and it’s easier to make fun of than reading the news and figuring out what Trump’s so proud of.
Trump’s followers have responded on Twitter
How can we tell Trump was asleep at this time and not just too damn mad at the press to complete his tweet? Well, it’s quite simple. He wasn’t aggressively replying to the people making fun of him, launching an intelligence investigation against the ones who aren’t famous and calling the ones who are “overrated,” so he couldn’t have been conscious during this time.
The hashtag #covfefe is trending now that Trump has left his tweet up and Twitter users have had time to each come up with something funny to say about it. And the best part was that the President was too busy sleeping to angrily defend himself in all-caps, so people were free to make fun of him to their heart’s content, like the American people should be able to do in a non-bureaucratic nation ruled by democracy.
Some funny comments were made about Trump’s unusual, unfinished tweet. Journalist Zack Bornstein tweeted, “This is the moment he became President.” Another Twitter user mentioned how they were “about to go to bed” when they saw “covfefe” pop up on their Twitter feed, at which point they could no longer sleep and instead had to “stare at” it “until it goes away now.”
The tweet has 70,000 retweets
Trump’s tweet has been retweeted 70,000 times by his followers and other Twitter users, making it one of the President’s most shared tweets. The tweet going viral meant trolls were not far behind. Comedian and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said that the “saddest” part of the debacle is that he’ll never be able to “write anything funnier than #covfefe.” Another Twitter user suggested what “covfefe” might mean, suggesting a very crude definition, posting: “Grab them by the #covfefe.” Christian Becker wrote a little sketch set at a spelling bee in which the kid’s word is “covfefe” and the kid asks the judge to “use it in a sentence,” and the judge says, “No, no I don’t think that’s possible.” Funny. Maybe “SNL” will steal it.
