President Trump tweets "covfefe"; Twitter has a field day

US President Donald Trump sent a lot of people, including reporters, scurrying for dictionaries when he posted an odd tweet that used the word “covfefe”. Trump wrote on Twitter in the early morning hours of May 31: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” It left many of his 31 million followers on Twitter baffled, and slightly concerned.

Most people think he meant to write “press coverage,” and it was a typo/spelling error. The strange tweet remained up for at least an hour after it first appeared (presumably Trump’s press team was sleeping), reported Heavy.com More than 73,000 people retweeted the tweet in just 120 minutes, and it earned its own hashtag. Twitter had a field day.

"...being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear #Covfefe shall not be infringed"

— 𖤐 Jeff (@RattlesnakeShk) May 31, 2017

Does no one on staff have his password? Have they tried the most common ones? 123456, or 11111, or, like ... "password"?

— Clive Thompson (@pomeranian99) May 31, 2017

So what does the word “covfefe” mean? Again, it means nothing apparently. It appears to be a typo/spelling error. It doesn’t come up in standard dictionaries, and, although a lot of people thought he meant to say press coverage, a few people thought he meant press conference. This was Merriam-Webster’s reaction:

Wakes up.
Checks Twitter.
.
.
.
Uh...
.
.
.
📈 Lookups fo...
.
.
.
Regrets checking Twitter.
Goes back to bed.

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) May 31, 2017

USA Today points out that, even if the president meant to write “despite the constant negative press coverage,” it’s still not clear what he was talking about since the sentence cuts off.

Much has been written about Trump’s novel use of Twitter. He says he uses it to communicate to people outside the media filter and, of course, supporters argue he won the election doing things his way. Recent reports indicated that his lawyers might start vetting his tweets, though. Judging from “covfefe,” it doesn’t appear that anyone’s vetting them yet, wrote Heavy.com.