'Covfefe' probably a typo, but Trump wants internet to play the guessing game

Stifling yawns in the dead of the night, the internet has been scratching its head after Donald Trump used the word 'covfefe' in an incoherent midnight tweet on May 31.

And the US President seemed to have taken pleasure from confounding them as netizens went nuts immediately with theories of its meaning alongside the flood of jokes and memes about the odd phrase: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe."

Like a mischievous college boy who's aware of his mistake but still wanted to have some fun with it, he deleted the post hours later but followed up with a playful message at 6.09am: "Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe" ??? Enjoy!"

It's a no-brainer for those following his frequent outbursts at the media for portraying him in a bad light. It was simply a typo by a shaky hand probably wearied after a long night.

He probably wanted to type out the word 'coverage', but what came out was gibberish.

[embed]https://twitter.com/K_JeanPierre/status/869934663288184835[/embed]

The original message, which seemed to have been the start of a Trump rant against the media again, soon became a top trend on Twitter, reported Reuters.

[embed]https://twitter.com/owillis/status/869778862124802053[/embed]

To confound those confused netizens even more, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said: "I think the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant."

Spicer was replying to a question thrown at him during a media meeting later in the day asking why the tweet remained uncorrected for so long on Trump's personal @realDonaldTrump account.

When asked whether people should be concerned that the president sent out an incoherent tweet and left it up for hours, Spicer said: "No."

Spicer's smug reply seems to suggest that the vast Internet populations are quite dumb as only "a small group of people know exactly what he meant".

Or perhaps, it was his jibe at Trump critics who has unleashed endless waves of mockery with their wild guesses of its meaning.

[embed]https://twitter.com/Tzantali1/status/869889666392227840[/embed]

[embed]https://twitter.com/Impeach_D_Trump/status/869951608355868672[/embed]

Dismissing the Trump tweet as a late-night error, Democratic senator Al Franken, joked in a CNN interview on Wednesday morning: "A covfefe is a Yiddish term for 'I got to go to bed now,'"

Radio show host Laura Ingraham tweeted in response to Trump's guess-the-meaning post that, "It's so bad--the collusion b/t (between) the Dems & the press, the establ(ishment) vs the ppl(people), that we needed a new word to describe it all. #Covfefe!"

chenj@sph.com.sg

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