Covfefe

Covfefe (COv-Fee-Fe) was a Malamanteau used as a neologism for a portmanteau created by incorrectly combining a malapropism with a neologism. It was coined by Donald "The Donald™", Sr.

It was the result of several rather extraordinary events that unfolded over the 31st of May and 1st of June, 2017.

All times are taken from memory extraction

12:06 AM

The President is out of bed. Unbeknownst to his party and followers, he has in fact been taking up the bottle of vodka beside his bed. He runs to his Samsung Galaxy Note 7, goes on Twitter and types a string of words, that, according to a leaked interview with former ISIS leader James Comey, was supposed to say "negative press cov. feferi constantly ruining my #MAGA." However, the phone violently exploded as he was typing the third word, shrinking his hand to a sub-par size. This resulted in his account posting a cut-off sentence:

negative press covfefe

The internet watches this latest tweet and starts to speculate on its meaning.

7:00 AM

As morning comes over the White House, Trump's office is waiting for him to come down to ask/interrogate him about this odd tweet. He had realised that his consumption of alcohol may have been revealed to the world. His response was that he had attempted to type 'coverage', and his drunken brain had messed up his control over the keys.

It was too late. Trump's message had become the #1 discussion topic of the internet in the early hours of the morning: it had been retweeted over 100,000 times. It was already one of the biggest memes of 2017, and the year wasn't even half over.

12:00 PM

Trump goes over the facts of what happened. He is not worried about damaging his reputation: clearly, in his eyes, it was already damaged enough. As his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, prepares to respond to questions about the tweet, he knows that questions about alcohol are not likely to come up.

If they do, he states that 'covfefe' is a name Trump has invented for 'something similar to Irish coffee. In fact, it basically is Irish coffee, but without the immigrant name'. Spicer's alternative facts might be about to save the day here.

2:30 PM

Now that the press briefing is over, Spicer goes back to the office. He explains to everyone his definition of covfefe: 'The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant'. Disregarding the fact that 'a small group' could in fact consist of nobody, Spicer refused to say anything further.

Trump's secret might have been out. The internet continued to speculate what had driven the usually-sober President to (apparent) drinking and then misspelling an average word: perhaps it was fallout from the 'evil losers' comment that he had used to describe the Manchester terror attacks? Perhaps it was a clever distraction from all the other problems plaguing the Oval Office? Nobody seemed to know.

7AM the next day: Press coverage (spelled correctly this time)

Twenty-four hours had passed. Trump had deleted the tweet. While the number of people commenting on this faux pas was still at an all-time high, the press were starting to comment on the more serious consequences of this post.

A news writer for Bloomberg called it the 2010s equivalent of Reagan's 'We begin bombing in five minutes', even stating that it was exactly tweet length at 136 characters. One reporter said that Spicer was using his 'alternative facts' to protect Trump's reputation and 'myth of infallibility', despite the fact that nobody, not even his own office, believed that Trump was infallible.

Some even went so far as to state that the typo was intentional (as was the consumption of alcohol on Trump's part, and writing at midnight) to 'mask a conspiracy' in these quarters.

Meanwhile, the rest of the internet had fun with a video that juxtaposed at least twenty news anchors from around the world attempting to pronounce the offending word. It seemed this was a low for Trump's presidency, and he needed to get back on his feet.

June 12th

The whisky bottle had been confiscated, Trump was starting to recover, and Spicer had found some other issue to be Orwellian about.

On the other side, members of the government had found a way to make this gaffe into a brand new law.

Democratic representative Mike Quigley introduced the legislation entitled COVFEFE, or Communication over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement: a law about records of the President's writings on social media.

In fact, it may have been foresight on Trump's part, and the 'conspiracy' the Washington Post believed in had come to life: he was in fact referring to 'negative press coverage of [the signing of] COVFEFE', assuming that the bill would affect him significantly due to his use of social media.

Whether this was intentional (as Spicer said) or simply a coincidence may be a mystery forever.

Aftermath

The President turns to go downstairs for another helping.

The President's tweet was Liked, Retweeted, Followed, and Hashtagged thousands of times in the time it takes to brew a fresh pot. People speculated on the meaning of covfefe. Experts in the Russian language saw no cognates there, although there must be, given the clandestine collusion that had been going on all year.

By 5:48 AM ET, the tweet was deleted. This can only mean that Trump got his fresh pot of extra-strong covfefe and was still awake. At 6:09 AM ET, Trump's all-nighter was essentially complete, and his account tweeted, "Who can figure out the true meaning of 'covfefe' ??? Enjoy!"

Who can figure out the true meaning of 'covfefe' ??? Enjoy!

@TheRealDonaldTrumpAcceptNoSubstitutes, May 31, 2017 6:09 AM EDT

It insulted Americans that Trump would riddle them during a time of national crisis, epidemics, and man-caused runaway planetary destruction. For example, CNN host Reza Aslan stated that "This piece of shit is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency." The sudden and unprovoked comment on Trump could only refer to the covfefe riddle, though excessive intake of covfefe can indeed lead to stains on the presidency, especially when spilled in the drinker's lap. Unlike McDonald's, the victim cannot sue the White House kitchen, even if he is the President, because the doctrine of sovereign immunity applies to the cook as well.

Reaction

Reaction to the tweet spawned numerous Internet memes and ridicule of Trump — in other words, business as usual.

#Covfefe became Twitter's #1 trending hashtag within one hour of the tweet, pushing aside such popular tweets as #FreeTheBokoHaramSexSlaves and #IsraelBackToPre1948Borders. When the tweet was taken down, #Covfefe acquired a post-mortem life of its own. It garnered 127,000 retweets and more than 162,000 likes, making it one of Trump's most popular tweets, given that it didn't relate to Congressional inaction or Trump's coverage in the New York Times. The response "What is 'covfefe'?" became a crowd-pleasing question in reply to almost any answer on the television show Jeopardy!

Even later, Clinton tweeted, "I promise to covfefe entirely with the committee investigating etaoin shrdlu." Covfefe here seems to be one of two placeholders signifying coughing fits.

Hillary Clinton joked at a Q&A session that day, "You don't have a high enough classification to know what it means." Clinton said that she did, and she knew, although she now can't seem to remember, but it was on one of the many servers she BitBleached and the only copy is with Carlos Danger and you can't read it because his bulging underpants are blocking the view. Later, Clinton tweeted, "People in covfefe houses shouldn't throw covfefe." Right-wing talk radio host Laura Ingraham tweeted that "covfefe" means the conspiracy of the press and the Deep Snake against "the people". Liberal media commentator Barton Swaim opined in The Washington Post that "covfefe" showed that America must not be truly imperiled, or it would not have time for such jesting, so we can dismiss all this business about de-funding Planned Parenthood and rebuilding the military.

In short, everyone on the political spectrum agreed that inability to understand covfefe meant that the policy debate was now complete and they had won it.

Interpretation

The most common explanation of covfefe, based on proximity of various keys on the QWERTY keyboard, is that Trump meant to type "separation of powers" but simply hit the wrong keys. Because he is such a moron. Along with being cunning and malevolent.

CNN journalist Chris Cillizza called the incident "dumb," but added that it would be "dumber" for people to guess the meaning of the word, when they should be outraged at a President trying to communicate directly with the American people, as opposed to granting weekly interviews on CNN. Cillizza's statement led directly to his CNN colleague Bill Maher calling himself a "house nigger" on his show on June 2.

The Deaf and Dumb Foundation did not ask Cillizza to avoid using a word denoting inability to speak to call someone stupid. Because, CNN. However, the NAACP did politely ask Maher to henceforth call himself a "house Colored Person."

On May 31, several Trump supporters on /r/The_Donald said "covfefe" was Arabic for "I will stand up." They cited Google Translate, which has not been wrong yet. The Daily Apostrophe noted that a different spelling, "cov fe'fe", means "Prepare to die, infidel bastard." This weblogger faulted Trump for his horrible punctuation. However, Ali Adeeb Alnaemi, a certifiable towel-head, told the New York Times there is no such word, just before slitting the reporter's throat.

Regarding the deletion of the tweet and the substitution of the follow-on tweet with its seeming self-deprecation, these journalists warned that, while seeming like a rare moment of humility, it was actually a self-serving, crass political gambit that should not take the hounds off the pursuit.

Washington response

The full Senate approves the conference committee report on establishing the Joint Committee on Covfefe. Highlighted: John McCain was not at his desk, as he left the vjsmnrt in ptoyrdy.

There is no spate of confusion so total that it cannot be used as a basis for a new and permanent bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. Within a week, Trump issued an Executive Order "Regarding a Presidential Commission to Investigate the Use of the Word Covfefe."

Congress set up a Joint Committee on Covfefe. Senate leader Mitch McConnell said "it will do a world of good," notably getting the American people to forget about all those nettlesome campaign promises to do something about Obama-care. He stated, "If we can tell the people we did something about covfefe, we can tell them we did something about something."

However, Senate rules require the Joint Committee to be scored using settled science by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Sure enough, by the middle of the month, the CBO had ruled that Congress was not allowed to do a world of good without a plan in place to balance it by doing an equal amount of harm.