Covfefe quickly became the word of the day Wednesday after President Donald Trump tweeted, at 12:06 a.m., “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”
The garbled word was mostly likely a typo, but that didn’t stop journalists and pundits from wasting countless hours trying to decipher — and mocking — covfefe. Trump added fuel to this fire when the original tweet was deleted and replaced with a follow up tweet just after 6 a.m.: “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’??? Enjoy!” Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested it could be a secret code. “The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” he said during the daily White House press briefing. He refused to elaborate.
Deleting the original covfefe post from Twitter may have broken the federal law that requires that records of presidential communications be preserved.
This seemingly silly incident reinforces a fundamental shortcoming of Trump and his presidency: He lacks the discipline, focus and seriousness needed to lead our nation.
Despite warnings from his lawyers and pleas from his staff to stop tweeting, the president types away on his mobile phone, composing tweets that will be analyzed not just by journalists but world leaders and, it turns out, judges assessing the president’s intent in issuing executive orders.
Their conclusions, generally, are not good.
In its February ruling to put on hold the White House’s travel restrictions on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries (later revised to six countries), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals referenced as evidence of religious discrimination the “numerous statements by the President about his intent to implement a ‘Muslim ban.’”
After that ruling, Trump tweeted: “SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”
Days later, a Justice Department attorney was before a federal judge in Washington state, asking that proceedings on the travel ban in that court be postponed.
“Counsel, I’m a little surprised,” Judge James Robart told the DOJ attorney Michelle Bennett as she made her request for postponement, “since the President said he wanted to ‘see you in Court,’” CNN reported. “Are you confident that’s the argument you want to make?”
Bennett said it was, but Robart ultimately ruled against her, allowing proceedings to continue.
After an earlier ruling from Robart against the travel ban, Trump called him a “so-called judge” in, you guessed it, a tweet.
In the most stinging rebuke, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled that the travel ban should remain on hold. The court’s chief judge wrote that that the travel ban “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”
The court relied on the many statements of Trump and his advisers about the need for a “Muslim ban” to conclude that the executive order was meant to explicitly target Muslims for exclusion from the United States, which would be unconstitutional.
The president’s tweets about former FBI Director James Comey and the ongoing investigations into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and its ties to the Trump administration are likely to soon be used in similar ways.
Beyond having his tweets used against him, Trump’s propensity to lash out through Twitter is juvenile and petty — and unpresidential. We need a president who carefully considers the issues before him and understands and cares about the impacts of the decisions — and statements — he makes. Instead, Trump makes hasty decisions, often based on minimal information and his gut instincts, and mocks those who worry about their consequences.
This type of behavior has already diminished America’s standing as a world leader, and it threatens to push the country backward in terms of civil rights, environmental protection, health care and many other vital issues.
We need less covfefe and more civility and genuine leadership from the White House.