“The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” said White House press secretary Sean Spicer, when asked the mysterious, viral tweet President Trump sent late last night.
Spicer on ‘covfefe’ tweet: "The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant." https://t.co/URM4mW8pmO
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 31, 2017
Predictably, the vague explanation drew laughter from the press and more scorn on Twitter, where commentators had previously joked about the press secretary being forced to explain what most assumed to be a typo.
Covfefe has been up for nearly 30 mins. We can only assume from this that he tweeted exactly what he meant to. Spicer will explain tomorrow.
— Matt Bevan ???? (@MatthewBevan) May 31, 2017
bet he tweeted covfefe just to watch Spicer lie about it.
— Ariel Dovas (@eviloars) May 31, 2017
Meanwhile, Wikipedia users attempted to interpret Trump’s coinage on a page devoted to the word. “The most common theory is that given the context, Trump meant to type ‘coverage,'” according to Wikipedia. “Others have put forth the possibility that it could be a codeword, neologism, or proper noun. The lack of punctuation suggests that Trump may have been interrupted mid-tweet. Some Trump supporters hailed the tweet as an example of how Trump expresses what he really thinks rather than looking to polls or focus testing before putting forth his ideas and new words.”