WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s cryptic tweet of a non-existent word — “covfefe” — sparked a flood of humour and ridicule on the internet, but it also highlighted the inability of his communications team to control White House messaging.

It may have been a simple keyboard slip, or a “senior moment”, the soon to be 71-year-old Trump’s huge catalog of Twitter bloopers regularly offer evidence that a spelling-challenged speed-tweeter occupies the Oval Office. It also shows that four months into his administration, the US president’s unfiltered use of the medium remains unchecked.

The consequence is deep turmoil in his communications staff: the White House is rife with rumours that the boss is preparing mass firings, and this week, communications director Mike Dubke resigned just four months into the job.

Trump’s tweets — complete with spelling errors, rants about “fake news” and even a mistweet at a British woman instead of his own daughter — often result in a collective sigh from both critics and backers, who wonder “What next?”

That’s what happened after his nonsensical tweet in the early hours of Wednesday: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”

The word doesn’t exist in English, or apparently any human language. Mock interpretations said it was Russian for “I resign”, ancient Egyptian for “media witch hunt”, or more unprintable things. The Regent’s English Language Centre in London wrote: “We can confirm that ‘covfefe’ is not an English word. Yet.”

Newsweek declared it the “word of the year — or century”.

Trump — who declared during the election campaign last year that “I’m very highly educated. I know words; I have the best words” — even jumped into the fun.

After deleting the original tweet, he put out a new one: “Who can figure out the true meaning of `covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!”

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2017