Donald Trump revives ‘Crooked Hillary’ nickname on Twitter only to be trumped by election rival with ‘covfefe’ KO

Social media sparring between former candidates latest twist in tweet typo saga

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (AFP/AP)

Perhaps attempting to escape the afterglow of his strange tweet that included the now famous combination of letters “covfefe,” President Trump revived his old favourite moniker for Hillary Clinton on Wednesday: “Crooked Hillary.”

He was responding to comments made by Clinton earlier in the day at the Recode Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, where she was interviewed on stage by two tech journalists and spoke in detail about the 2016 presidential election.

“I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that's not why I lost,” she said.

Clinton pointed to several factors as the reason she lost, including fake news on Facebook and troubles at the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

At one point saying she suspects Trump's campaign might have guided or Russian government propaganda effects.

Russians wanted to spread misinformation about her, she said, but “could not have known how best to weaponise that information unless they had been guided... Guided by Americans and guided by people who had polling and data information.”

When asked who she thought was guiding the Russians, she said, “I'm leaning Trump. I think it's pretty hard not to.”

Several hours later, the President took to Twitter.

Less than an hour later, Clinton retweeted Trump's insult, adding a message of her own:

In response to Clinton's humorous “covfefe house” tweet, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. joined in the social media sparring match by tweeting:

Clinton's note was a reference to the sentence fragment Trump tweeted at 12.06am EDT on Wednesday, which simply read, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”

Within four hours, Clinton's message had been retweeted about 150,000 times and “liked” about 320,000 times. It surpassed Trump's original “covfefe” tweet, which was retweeted more than 127,000 times and “liked” more than 162,000 times when it was deleted.

The Washington Post