How was your morning covfefe? Did you have it with cream or did you drink it … whatever color covfefe is without cream? Was it both a floor polish and a desert topping?
What the hell does it mean? Around midnight, Donald Trump first tweeted a cryptic fragment “Despite the constant negative press covfefe." He then removed that tweet—some four hours later—and replaced it with the one above.
Like the citizens of Springfield pondering the meaning of “Gabbo” in the Simpson’s, America got to spend the evening wondering “What is ‘covfefe.’” Unlike those baffled Simpson’s folk, the dummy in this case is already here. It’s as if Trump presented the nation with, not an intelligence test, but proof that we already flunked a national intelligence test—by electing Trump.
The most obvious explanation is that Trump started to type something about “negative press coverage” but missed the word so badly that even he became baffled about what he originally meant to type. Then, after staring at “covfefe” for some extended period, he just pushed “send” anyway. Hey, he typed it. It had to be good.
Four hours of Deep Thought later, Trump decided that the best use of the word would be to grind some salt into the national wound, pointing out that he didn’t merely have an aneurysm mid-Tweet, but knowingly shared with the world a blob of perfectly cromulent letters.