Congressman drafts COVFEFE Act to preserve Trump's Twitter tantrums

A US congressman has written up a bill that calls for the President's social media activity to be archived alongside other official communications.

The amusingly titled "Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement," or the COVFEFE Act, is the work of Mike Quigley (D-IL), who named the bill in a nod to one of Donald Trump's more infamous Twitter rants.

"In order to maintain public trust in government, elected officials must answer for what they do and say; this includes 140-character tweets," Quigley said of the bill that has not yet been formally introduced.

"President Trump's frequent, unfiltered use of his personal Twitter account as a means of official communication is unprecedented."

The COVFEFE Act would add social media communications as records to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and would charge the National Archives with logging and preserving, among other things, the President's tweets.

It would also make it illegal for the President (or anyone on his staff) to delete tweets from the official presidential account (@POTUS), something Trump has been known to do from time to time.

"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," said Quigley.

"Tweets are powerful, and the President must be held accountable for every post."

This isn't the first time Quigley has offered up legislation aimed at irking Trump. In March, the Illinois Democrat submitted the MAR-A-LAGO act, a bill to expand the keeping of visitor logs for Presidential meetings outside of the White House.

That bill remains under consideration by the House Oversight and Government Reform. With the Republicans firmly in control of Congress, the COVFEFE Act will likely suffer the same fate. ®