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Politics

What's a 'covfefe,' President Trump?

May 31, 2017

The world wonders anew as the US president can't seem to complete a social media sentence. Since becoming an early adopter of the form, Donald Trump has demonstrated an unprecedented approach to 140-character appraisals.

https://p.dw.com/p/2dsPh
Twitter Account US-Präsident Donald Trump
Image: twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

US President Donald Trump joined the chorus of laughs at his own expense on Wednesday, addressing the brewing "covfefe" mystery with a question of his own.

That referenced a wild and for some worrisome midnight tweet in which Trump left what appeared to be a mangled word at the unfinished end of a complicated thought.

Trump has made himself no stranger to laments about the media, but his latest media lament was for many his strangest yet: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe."

While many tweeters scratched their heads, others thought it more helpful to help the US president complete his (possible) thought:

With Trump engaged in an on- and offline war of words with Germany's government, there was even early attention from a politician in Berlin: Left party parliamentarian Stefan Liebich endorsed both covfefe and the medium that birthed it.

Not an unprecedented (sp?) case

Even before winning the US presidency on a minority vote last fall, Trump had demonstrated an affinity for Twitter, though not always a knack for it. In 2013, he took to the site to commemorate, in his own way, the victims of the 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington.

Three years later, in the surreal two months between his election and inauguration, Trump was humbled by an "unpresidented" homemade homophone.

Shortly after assuming his new role, Trump tweeted that he was "honered" to work for Americans.

That was quickly deleted and reposted with corrected spelling. Covfefe remained up for hours.