Donald Trump finally deletes ‘covfefe’ tweet five hours after posting it
The removal might have broken the law
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump's "covfefe" tweet was already an embarrassment. But it might also be breaking the law.
The president has deleted the now infamous tweet, five hours after it was posted. It only read "Despite the constant negative press covfefe" – a gnomic post that brought confusion and memes as people attempted to work out what he was saying.
Now – a mere five hours and 126,000 retweets after posting it – Mr Trump has apparently confirmed that the post was a mistake by removing it from the site.
But that might make the president's fortunes even worse. Some have suggested that Mr Trump isn't actually allowed to remove his posts at all, because doing so violates laws that require records to be kept of the president's communications.
The National Archives has instructed the White House that it needs to keep a record of everything Mr Trump posts, even if he then goes on to the delete the posts. The organisation said in a letter to senators in March that it had told the Trump team that it needs to "capture and preserve all tweets that the President posts… including those that are subsequently deleted".
But responsibility for actually doing so relies on the president, and the National Archives and other bodies that catalogue presidential communications are unable to compel him to prove that he's done so. The White House has claimed that the deleted tweets are being recorded, but it hasn't proved that publicly.
The "cofveve" tweet was far from the first to be deleted from Mr Trump's account. He regularly removes posts that include typos, misspellings or mistakes – though they are usually re-posted after they have been corrected.
At the time of publishing, Mr Trump hasn't posted a corrected version of the tweet. It has been speculated that it may have sent it before going to sleep at midnight, and then deleted it when he woke up again around 5am – the time when his earliest tweets usually start to be sent.
It's not clear that the tweet was deleted by Mr Trump himself or by a member of his staff.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments