No one who is sane can figure out the current political\nlandscape. No one can understand why the president is so divisive in his\ntweets, calling the press the \u201cenemy of the people,\u201d and tweeting out\ncriticisms of everyone he doesn\u2019t agree with. It all goes back, I think, to May\n17, 2017, when he made the famous \u201cdespite the negative press covfefe\u201d tweet,\nwhich began a firestorm of commentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here\u2019s what the New\nYork Times<\/em> said about this crazy tweet in the article titled, \u201cWhat\u2019s a\n\u2018Covfefe\u2019? Trump Tweet Unites a Bewildered Nation\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n And on the 132nd day, just after midnight, President Trump had at last delivered the nation to something approaching unity \u2014 in bewilderment, if nothing else. The state of our union was \u2026 covfefe. The trouble began, as it so often does, on Twitter, in the early minutes of Wednesday morning. Mr. Trump had something to say. Kind of.<\/p> \u201cDespite the constant negative press covfefe,\u201d the Twitter post began, at 12:06 a.m., from @realDonaldTrump, the irrepressible internal monologue of his presidency.<\/p> And that was that. A minute passed. Then another. Then five. Surely he would delete the message. Ten. Twenty. It was nearly 12:30 a.m. Forty minutes. An hour. The questions mounted.<\/p> Had the president\u2019s lawyers, so eager to curb his stream-of-consciousness missives, tackled the commander in chief under the cover of night? Perhaps, some worried aloud, Mr. Trump had experienced a medical episode a quarter of the way through his 140 characters.<\/p> But by 1 a.m., the debate had effectively consumed Twitter \u2014 or at least a certain segment of insomniac Beltway types, often journalists and political operatives \u2014 ascending the list of trending topics. \u201cOf course #covfefe is real word,\u201d wrote @Diane_7A, recalling an invented tragedy once invoked by the Trump White House. \u201cIt was coined during the Bowling Green Massacre.\u201d<\/p> \u201cWhat if this is it,\u201d asked Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker television critic, after just five minutes. \u201cThat is his final tweet & the rest of history stops.\u201d<\/p> …\u201cCovfefe,\u201d said Tasneem Raja, a journalist, perhaps chafing at the growing communal giddiness. \u201cThere, I participated.\u201d<\/p> Eventually, the jokes lurched into delirium. Twitter users held forth on the former F.B.I. director James Covfefe. They pledged to order a grande covfefe during their next Starbucks runs. They announced they had at last discovered what Bill Murray whispered to Scarlett Johansson at the end of \u201cLost in Translation.\u201d<\/p> Just after 6 a.m., the president resurfaced, finally deleting the Twitter post and tapping out another.<\/p> \u201cWho can figure out the true meaning of \u2018covfefe\u2019 ???\u201d he wrote. \u201cEnjoy!\u201d<\/p> Consensus proved elusive \u2014 to say nothing of pronunciation guidelines \u2014 and the White House appeared disinclined to help. \u201cThe president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,\u201d Sean Spicer, the press secretary, said flatly. He did not elaborate.<\/p> But someone else had a theory \u2014 the American perhaps most attuned to the power of the president\u2019s Twittering hand. \u201cI thought it was a hidden message,\u201d Hillary Clinton told a crowd in California, \u201cto the Russians.\u201d<\/p> Source: https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/05\/31\/us\/politics\/covfefe-trump-twitter.html<\/a> <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And there you have it. That tweet was the first that got\npeople thinking, \u201cthis president might be mentally unbalanced.\u201d After that,\nthis narrative was taken up by the press. Acting AG Rod Rosenstein joked a year\nlater that the president might be crazy enough to invoke the 25th amendment and\nthat he could be removed from power. Nancy Pelosi seriously considered it as an\nitem in a potential impeachment investigation of Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the real meaning of covfefe? Well, I\u2019m going to\noffer my own explanation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We all know that Donald Trump is a big WWE wrestling fan. So\nbig that the WWE website has devoted a bio page to Trump:<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.wwe.com\/superstars\/donald-trump<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In WWE wrestling, there is a term called \u201ckayfabe.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what Wikipedia says about the word kayfabe:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In professional wrestling, kayfabe \/\u02c8ke\u026afe\u026ab\/ (also called work or worked) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as “real” or “true”, specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or predetermined nature of any kind. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this “reality” within the direct or indirect presence of the general public. <\/p> Kayfabe is often seen as the suspension of disbelief that is used to create the non-wrestling aspects of promotions, such as feuds, angles, and gimmicks in a manner similar to other forms of fictional entertainment. In relative terms, a wrestler breaking kayfabe during a show would be likened to an actor breaking character on-camera. Also, since wrestling is performed in front of a live audience, whose interaction with the show is crucial to its success, kayfabe can be compared to the fourth wall in acting, since hardly any conventional fourth wall exists to begin with. In general, everything in a professional wrestling show is to some extent scripted, or “kayfabe”, even though at times it is portrayed as real-life.\u201d<\/p>Source: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kayfabe<\/a> <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n For example, kayfabe has also been practiced in Hollywood and in entertainment. The famous (fake) feud between Matt Damon and Jimmy Kimmel is now a running joke. The feuds between comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen, and comedian\/actor Bob Hope and singer\/actor Bing Crosby, were totally fake. Benny and Allen were best friends in real life, while Hope and Crosby were also close friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So OK, what does WWE have to do with covfefe and Trump? Later on in this article, it says, <\/p>\n\n\n\n It has long been claimed that kayfabe has been used in American politics, especially in election campaigns, Congress, and the White House, but no evidence of actual usage of kayfabe in Washington has ever been uncovered. In interviews as Governor of Minnesota, former wrestler Jesse Ventura often likened Washington to wrestling when he said that politicians “pretend to hate each other in public, then go out to dinner together.”<\/p>Ibid.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a stretch, but linking covfefe with kayfabe isn\u2019t too\nridiculous. No more ridiculous than the other explanations for covfefe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this interpretation, Trump\u2019s \u201ccovfefe\u201d tweet was the\nultimate troll. It was a message, for those who could understand, that what was\nabout to happen in the next 3 years of his presidency was, basically, going to\nbe staged. Kayfabe baby! As the Wikipedia definition says, \u201cKayfabe is the\nportrayal of staged events within the industry as “real” or\n“true”.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This only makes sense if what we\u2019re seeing is really staged\nor scripted. Some claim that the president is working with the military, and\nmilitary intelligence, on a multi-decade plan that began after JFK was\nassassinated. This plan is about what Trump called \u201cdraining the swamp\u201d (getting\nrid of the criminal elements in Washington DC). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Crazy? Yup. But no crazier than the events we read about\nevery day in the news. Seriously, folks, you couldn\u2019t make this shit up. I\ncheck the news every day, and I do sometimes feel that I\u2019m watching a movie. It\u2019s\nunreal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hey, the tweet might simply have been referring to a cup of\ncoffee, as in, \u201cdespite the negative press I\u2019m going to sit back and drink a\ncup of coffee.\u201d But the Times<\/em> piece\n(and others), and the heated reaction to it, tells me that tweet was way more\nimportant. It tells me that certain folks in the media had a good idea what it\nwas really about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We probably won\u2019t know the truth until November of 2020. By\nthen, hopefully, we\u2019ll have more clarity in this crazy movie we are living in.\nOr is it a Matrix? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The old order is crumbling. We are seeing very strange things,\nmurderers shooting up people in public, the president trolling the media (and\nanyone who he doesn\u2019t like), and a political frenzy being generated among the\npopulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is there a method to Trump\u2019s madness? <\/p>\n\n\n\n He thinks so. \n\nWe\u2019ll just have to wait and see whether he is really\ncrazy, or whether he\u2019s a \u201cstable genius.\u201d It\u2019s all about the 2020 election.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No one who is sane can figure out the current political landscape. No one can understand why the president is so divisive in his tweets, calling the press the \u201cenemy of the people,\u201d and tweeting out criticisms of everyone he … Continue reading