RealClear Originals: A Covfefe Kind of Week

A Covfefe Kind of Week

By Emily Goodin

It’s been one covfefe of a week.

Even though Monday was a holiday and Congress is out of town, Washington has been chock-full of news.

And it began with the tweet heard around the world early Wednesday morning, when President Trump’s account wrote: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe."

That was it. Six hours later, the tweet was deleted but not before it became an Internet sensation. The next tweet from the account noted: “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!”

The staff at RealClearLife examined the covfefe fallout, including the .gifs that came from the gaffe and where you can buy the T-shirt (yes, there’s a T-shirt).

Even Hillary Clinton got into the act. Speaking Wednesday at the 2017 Code Conference, a tech gathering in Silicon Valley, the former Democratic presidential nominee complained about the lack of support she received from the party.

“I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,” she said. “I mean, it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.”

Trump went on the attack, tweeting: “Crooked Hillary Clinton now blames everybody but herself, refuses to say she was a terrible candidate. Hits Facebook & even Dems & DNC.”

Clinton retweeted him with this remark: “People in covfefe houses shouldn't throw covfefe."

Meanwhile, I wrote for RealClearPolitics on how for veteran Trump staffers, chaos is a normal part of the job.

“We suffer from Stockholm syndrome that has been forged in battle,” one former senior transition official said, mischaracterizing somewhat the psychological condition in which captives come to sympathize with their captors. The meaning here is that these staffers forged bonds on the rough and tumble campaign trail, a dynamic that has fortified them against pushback from other White House staffers who worked at the Republican National Committee, as well as from the party itself and the press.

In other news, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement on Thursday, a move that drew praise from the right, noted Caitlin Huey-Burns and James Arkin. GOP leaders on Capitol Hill cheered the decision, as did conservative groups that saw the accord as symbolic of government overreach, the RCP reporters wrote.

At RealClearEnergy, R Street Institute’s Catrina Rorke argues: “Beware of hyperbole: President Trump ‘canceling’ Paris doesn’t mean much. All the hand-wringing about the wavering U.S. commitment to climate diplomacy misses the larger message. International agreements don’t solve climate change. Good intentions don’t count. And moreover, when it comes tackling climate change, the U.S. is beating its Paris partners anyway.”

And RealClearScience editor Tom Hartsfield examines the “scientifically valid arguments for fleeing Paris.”

Topics du Jour

RealClearWorld has created a U.K. Polling Average for the June 8 parliamentary elections there. Conservatives are in the lead by an 8.2 percent margin.

Economic News: The unemployment rate is at 4.3 percent, the Labor Department announced on Friday. RealClearMarkets editor John Tamny argues the Bureau of Labor Statistics and its unemployment report should be abolished because the BLS spends $640 million annually to duplicate information that is available elsewhere for free.

Hitting the Runway: In episode 5 of her “Politics Is Everything” podcast, Caitlin Huey-Burns examines the relationship between politics and fashion.

Military Math: At RealClearDefense, Sandra Erwin offers a deep-dive into the Pentagon’s budget request and notes that “the choices revealed in the 2018 budget offer some clear indicators of where the Pentagon is headed, regardless of what top line Congress ends up appropriating. Industry insiders point to several telling items: Procurement is flat (except bombs and missiles, which are up 17 percent), research and science get a 16 percent boost, and space programs are up 23 percent.”

On the Other Side of the World: Cambodians go to the polls on June 4. Rachael Burton of The Project 2049 Institute writes at RealClearWorld about the Cambodia National Rescue Party, an opposition party that is organized to compete effectively for the first time in decades.

Also at RealClearWorld, Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic, who were part of reform movements in Serbia, examine what can be done for Venezuela, a country that “is a towering case study of how bad governance, corruption, and autocracy can turn a country with the world`s largest oil reserves and tremendous human capital into a disaster.”

Healthy Businesses: At RealClearHealth, Robin Goracke, the director of Health Care Policy for the National Restaurant Association, argues that the Affordable Care Act created so many regulations for businesses that it’s stifling economic growth.

Early Education: At RealClearEducation, Jeanne Jeup of The Institute for Multi-Sensory Education explains how new legislation gives states the chance to improve literacy in early grades.

Millennials on the Run: At RealClearEnergy, the Manhattan Institute’s Mark Mills examines how the habits of millennials – that they “would rather bike and ride-share than own a car, and that they’d rather Airbnb or share a tiny urban apartment than buy a suburban house” – could cause a behavioral shift in the markets.

Crime and Punishment: At RealClearPolicy, former prosecutor Thomas Ascik applauds Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ efforts to roll back the Obama administration's crime policies.

“House of Cards”: Producers of the hit Netflix show tell RealClearLife editor Ethan Sacks that people shouldn't compare President Frank Underwood to Trump. “They’re very different figures,” executive producer Melissa James Gibson said. “Frank is a creature of the system. He came up through the system and he’s a product of it. Donald Trump is an outsider trying to blow the system up from the outside.”

Running Along: RealClearScience editor Ross Pomeroy reports you may have to run 15 percent faster on a treadmill than you do outside for the same physical benefits.