Save over 40% when you secure your tickets today to TNW Conference 💥 Prices will increase on November 22 →

This article was published on June 1, 2017

How the internet is handling Trump’s covfefe


How the internet is handling Trump’s covfefe

We again have President Donald Trump to thank/blame for our latest, greatest meme. Thanks to him, the internet spent a day losing its collective mind over covfefe.

In case you’ve been in a coma, this all started because Trump tweeted something in the wee morning hours that appeared to be a typo:

Despite the constant negative press covfefe

Everyone waited for him to delete the tweet and finish his thought. And waited. And checked their watches.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

The tweet stayed up a total of six hours. And in the interim, the internet had a field day.

Fanning the flames somewhat was Sean Spicer, whose response to “covfefegate,” according to CNN, was, “The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.”

What is covfefe?

Urban Dictionary quickly hit upon the most-likely definition of the word: “When you want to say “coverage” but your hands are too small to hit all the letters on your keyboard.” Senator Al Franken says it’s a Yiddish term for “I gotta go to bed now.” Huffington Post wrote a breathlessly satirical article about the meaning of “covfefe” in the native Samoan language (hint: it doesn’t have one).

Hilary Clinton joked at a Recode interview that covfefe was “a hidden message to the Russians.” She also mocked Spicer’s explanation:

Ah, the small group explanation. You don’t have a high enough classification to know what covfefe means.

Meanwhile, Twitter kept the joke going the whole day. A fight broke out between wizards, because of course it did:

People were bothering Merriam-Webster for the definition:

…but the dictionary was just as confused as we were:

As for Trump, he seems to be taking the jokes with good (if trollish) grace:

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with