Remember "covfefe," the now-deleted infamous presidential Twitter typo (he meant to type "press coverage") that drove the internet into a craze last month?
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Well, thanks to Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), the term is back and made its way to the House floor Monday as an acronym for new legislation that would nationally archive President Donald Trump's personal tweets as official presidential record.
The bill's full title is the "Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act" (or the "COVFEFE" Act) and it would officially add social media to the list of documentary materials preserved under the 1978 Presidential Records Act.
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Under the introduced legislation, presidential tweets would be sent straight to the National Archives and the deletion of tweets from the Twitter account would be a violation of the PRA subject to “disciplinary action.”
"President Trump's frequent, unfiltered use of his personal Twitter account as a means of official communication is unprecedented," Quigley said in a statement. "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. Tweets are powerful, and the President must be held accountable for every post."
Though the current language of the PRA lists any form of “electronic communication” as worthy of officially documenting and archiving, social media isn’t explicitly spelled out in the law.
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White House press secretary Sean Spicer told the media last week the president’s tweets should be taken as official presidential statements.
This is Quigley's second bill with a tongue-in-cheek jab at the president. In March, he introduced the Make Access Records Available to Lead Government Openness Act (the MAR-A-LAGO Act), which would require public visitor logs for locations where either the president or vice president conduct official business, including logs at Trump's resorts.
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According to Vox, Trump's trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida cost taxpayers nearly $10 million in his first month in office.
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