POLITICS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “According to the White House website, the role of the Office of Communications is to ‘craft the message’ President Trump delivers to the world. But that’s obviously total crap. Trump crafts his own message and delivers it himself to the world every day via Twitter. The role of his entirely superfluous communications staff at this point is to spin whatever Trump says into something less factually inaccurate or offensive on the taxpayer’s dime.
However, there are special rules that apply to the official Twitter account of the president of the United States (@POTUS) that do not currently apply to his personal account (@realDonaldTrump). The rules are described under the Presidential Records Act, which states that certain records generated by the White House do not belong to the US president, but are instead a matter of public record.
A new bill introduced in Congress this week is looking to enforce those rules with regard to Trump’s personal account since he often uses it to make announcements altering US policy, both foreign and domestic—even though there’s a zero chance in hell anything Trump tweets will ever disappear from the internet.
It’s called the “Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement” Act—yes, it’s the goddamn COVFEFE Act, in case you thought that joke was dead—and it was introduced by Rep. Mike Quigley, the Illinois Democrat who in March brought us the MAR-A-LAGO Act, which would require the publication of White House visitor logs. (The Trump White House has decided to keep the logs secret, reversing an Obama administration policy of publishing them automatically.)”
-Dell Cameron, “The ‘COVFEFE Act’ Is Necessary Legislation With a Name That Makes Us All Want to Die,” Gimodo, June 12, 2017 12:00pm