While mocking Trump over 'covfefe' tweet, CNN makes amateur mistake of its own

A CNN panel mocked President Donald Trump Wednesday over his viral "covfefe" tweet but as one viewer pointed out, the cable network made an amateur mistake of its own in the process.

The embarrassing on-air moment came during a discussion about what appeared to be a tweet that Trump posted by mistake Tuesday night.

"Despite the constant negative press covfefe," Trump tweeted. The post stayed up for more than six hours before it was eventually deleted.

The next morning, Trump tweeted, "Who can figure out the true meaning of "covfefe"??? Enjoy!"

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about the tweet during Wednesday's off-camera press briefing. Spicer told reporters that Trump and a "small group of people know exactly" what the president meant by "covfefe."

Politicians and pundits roundly mocked the tweet and the White House's response to it. Reporters were heard laughing at Spicer's response. The mockery carried over to CNN's "AC 360" with host Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night.

"What does 'covfefe' mean to you?" Cooper asked CNN political director David Chalian.

"It means nothing," a giggling Chalian replied. "It means, I don't know, maybe the president fell asleep while tweeting last night. I assume he was going to write the word 'coverage.' He was talking about the fake news media again and trying to disparage some of the reporting that's out there."

Cooper then turned to CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, who encouraged viewers to picture a "mad," lonely Trump feeling like he has "nobody to talk to."

"Imagine him home alone at the White House and he's tweeting about his negative press coverage and clearly it's something he is obsessing about constantly, even at midnight. And I don't know why he ended the tweet with 'covfefe' but he gave up, essentially," Borger said.

"But you can imagine him being alone and mad and feeling he has nobody to talk to and has to do his own press and so he started, but then he stopped in the middle of it," Borger said.

As Bob Parks at Black and Blonde Media pointed out, CNN aired an embarrassing typo of its own, even as the panel mocked Trump for the same thing.

Instead of the "i" coming before the "e" in the "chief" part of Borger's title in the chryon, the "e" came before the "i."

Image source: YouTube

The extremely ill-timed typo broke a well-known spelling rule that many learn in elementary school: "i before e, except after c."

The rule, like most in the English, has some exceptions. Unfortunately for CNN, "chief" isn't one of the exceptions.