The Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act (COVFEFE Act), House Bill H.R. 2884, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on June 12, 2017, during the 115th United States Congress. The bill was intended to amend the Presidential Records Act to preserve Twitter posts and other social media interactions of the President of the United States, and requires the National Archives to store such items. [1] [2] H.R. 2884 was assigned to the House Oversight and Reform Committee for consideration. While in committee, there were no roll call votes related to the bill. The bill died in committee. [3]
U.S. Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, introduced the legislation due to Donald Trump's routine use of Twitter, stating "In order to maintain public trust in government, elected officials must answer for what they do and say; this includes 140-character tweets. If the president is going to take to social media to make sudden public policy proclamations, we must ensure that these statements are documented and preserved for future reference". [1] If enacted, the bill "would bar the prolifically tweeting president from deleting his posts, as he has sometimes done". [1] [2]
The COVFEFE Act would also see United States law treat American presidents' personal social media accounts (e.g., Trump's "@realDonaldTrump" Twitter account) the same as "official" social media accounts (e.g., the "@POTUS" Twitter account). [2]
The bill title refers to "covfefe", a word in a May 31, 2017 tweet that Trump sent at 12:06 AM EDT, reading "Despite the constant negative press covfefe". This incomplete tweet was liked and retweeted hundreds of thousands of times, making it one of the most popular tweets of 2017, as people speculated on its meaning. [4] The tweet was deleted at 5:48 AM EDT. [5] At 6:09 AM EDT, Trump's account tweeted "Who can figure out the true meaning of 'covfefe' ??? Enjoy!" [6] [7]
During the May 31 White House press briefing, Hunter Walker of Yahoo! News asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer about the tweet and if there was any concern about the president sending out incoherent tweets that stay up for hours. Spicer responded, "I think the president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant" and offered no other explanation. This unexpected response spawned additional media attention and criticism for its cryptic meaning, with commentators unsure whether or not Spicer was joking. [8]
Callum Borchers of The Washington Post 's The Fix noted that the Trump administration deliberately responded in a way that encouraged the media and the public to focus on covfefe instead of other controversies like the Russia investigation, resignation of White House communications director Michael Dubke, or U.S.-Germany relations. [9]
Trump's tweets have been legally significant in the past. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated that Trump's tweets are "considered official statements by the President of the United States". [10]
Some of his tweets have contradicted his agenda by undercutting or contradicting statements of public officials as well as the arguments of U.S. Department of Justice attorneys seeking to defend Trump's decisions in court. A federal appellate court cited one of Trump's tweets in upholding a lower court's order blocking Trump's Executive Order 13780 from going into effect in 2017. Courts have been clear that Twitter statements can be used as evidence of intent. [11]
Before Trump's "@realDonaldTrump" Twitter account was suspended, he blocked a number of users, preventing them from viewing his tweets or posting public replies. A group associated with Columbia University filed a lawsuit on behalf of blocked users, called Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump . Plaintiffs successfully argued that @realDonaldTrump reply threads constituted a "designated public forum" akin to a public meeting, and therefore blocking users based on their political viewpoints violated their constitutional right to freedom of speech. [12] [13] The Second Circuit upheld this ruling on July 9, 2019. [14]
Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway is an American political consultant and pollster, who served as Senior Counselor to the President in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign. She has previously held roles as campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party, and was formerly president and CEO of the Polling Company/WomanTrend.
Censorship of X, formerly and colloquially known as Twitter, refers to Internet censorship by governments that block access to X. X censorship also includes governmental notice and take down requests to X, which X enforces in accordance with its Terms of Service when a government or authority submits a valid removal request to X indicating that specific content is illegal in their jurisdiction.
The political positions of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, have frequently changed. Trump is primarily a populist, protectionist, semi-isolationist, and nationalist.
Sean Michael Spicer is a former American political aide who served as the 30th White House Press Secretary and as White House Communications Director under President Donald Trump in 2017. Spicer was communications director of the Republican National Committee from 2011 to 2017, and its chief strategist from 2015 to 2017.
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Donald Trump during the first quarter of 2017, beginning from his inauguration as the 45th president of the United States on January 20, 2017, to March 31, 2017. To navigate between quarters, see timeline of the Donald Trump presidency. For the Q2 timeline see timeline of the Donald Trump presidency.
Daniel Scavino Jr. is an American political adviser who served in the Trump administration as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications from 2020 to 2021, and Director of Social Media from 2017 to 2021. Scavino previously was the general manager of Trump National Golf Club Westchester, and the director of social media for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign.
The social policy of the Donald Trump administration was generally socially conservative. As of 2016, Donald Trump described himself as pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and circumstances endangering the life of the mother. He said he was committed to appointing justices who may overturn the ruling in Roe v. Wade. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices during his presidency. All of them later went on to vote in the majority opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court case overturning Roe v. Wade and ending federal abortion rights nationwide.
Executive Order 13769, titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, labeled the "Muslim ban" by Donald Trump and his supporters and critics, and commonly known as such, or commonly referred to as the Trump travel ban, or Trump Muslim travel ban, was an executive order by President Trump. Except for the extent to which it was blocked by various courts, it was in effect from January 27, 2017, until March 6, 2017, when it was superseded by Executive Order 13780, a second order sharing the title "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States".
The Bowling Green massacre is a fictitious incident of Islamic terrorism mentioned by Kellyanne Conway, then–counselor to President Donald Trump, in interviews with Cosmopolitan and TMZ on January 29, 2017, and in an interview on the MSNBC news program Hardball with Chris Matthews on February 2, 2017. Conway cited it as justification for a travel and immigration ban from seven Muslim-majority countries enacted by United States president Donald Trump. However, no such massacre occurred. The day after the interview, Conway said she misspoke and had been referring to the 2011 arrest of two Iraqi refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on charges including "attempting to provide material support to terrorists and to al-Qaeda in Iraq." She stated that she had mentioned the incident because it led previous President Barack Obama to tighten immigration procedures for Iraqi citizens.
Sarah Elizabeth Huckabee Sanders is an American politician serving since 2023 as the 47th governor of Arkansas. Sanders is the daughter of Mike Huckabee, who served from 1996 to 2007 as Arkansas's 44th governor. A member of the Republican Party, she was the 31st White House press secretary, serving under President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019. Sanders was the third woman to be White House press secretary. She also served as a senior advisor on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders became the Republican nominee in the 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election and won, defeating Democratic nominee Chris Jones.
Many organizations reacted to the enactment of Executive Order 13769, titled "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States," which was an executive order issued by United States President Donald Trump. Domestically, the order was criticized by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, universities, business leaders, major corporations, Catholic bishops, and Jewish organizations. Some 1,000 U.S. diplomats signed a dissent cable opposing the order, setting a record. Public opinion was divided, with initial national polls yielding inconsistent results. Protests against the order erupted in airports and cities.
On March 4, 2017, Donald Trump wrote a series of posts on his Twitter account that falsely accused former President Barack Obama's administration of wiretapping his "wires" at Trump Tower late in the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and the Trump administration cited news reports to defend these accusations. His initial claims appeared to have been based on a Breitbart News article he had been given which repeated speculations made by conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch or on a Bret Baier interview, both of which occurred the day prior to his Tweets. By June 2020, no evidence had surfaced to support Trump's claim, which had been refuted by the Justice Department (DOJ).
The following is a timeline of the presidency of Donald Trump during the second quarter of 2017, from April 1 to June 30, 2017. To navigate between quarters, see timeline of the Donald Trump presidency.
Covfefe is a nonsense word, widely presumed to be a typographical error, that Donald Trump used in a viral tweet when he was President of the United States. It instantly became an Internet meme.
Donald Trump's use of social media attracted attention worldwide since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers. On November 19, 2022, Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, reinstated his account, although Trump has stated he will not use it in favor of his own social media platform, Truth Social. The first tweet since 2021 was made in August 2023 about his mugshot from Fulton County Jail, but the account has since remained inactive.
Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226 (2019), is a case at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on the use of social media as a public forum. The plaintiffs, Philip N. Cohen, Eugene Gu, Holly Figueroa O'Reilly, Nicholas Pappas, Joseph M. Papp, Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, and Brandon Neely, are a group of Twitter users blocked by U.S. President Donald Trump's personal @realDonaldTrump account. They alleged that Twitter constitutes a public forum, and that a government official blocking access to that forum is a violation of the First Amendment. The lawsuit also named as defendants White House press secretary Sean Spicer and social media director Dan Scavino.
Trump derangement syndrome (TDS) is a pejorative term, usually for criticism or negative reactions to former United States president Donald Trump that are perceived to be irrational and to have little regard towards Trump's actual policy positions, or actions undertaken by his administration. The term has mainly been used by Trump supporters to discredit criticism of him, as a way of reframing the discussion by suggesting that his opponents are incapable of accurately perceiving the world. Journalists have used the term to call for restraint when judging Trump's statements and actions.
During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day. The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump's mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive.
The Volfefe Index was a stock market index of volatility in market sentiment for US Treasury bonds caused by tweets by former President Donald Trump.
This bill was introduced on June 12, 2017. . . but it did not receive a vote.