Hillary Clinton speaks during the Children's Health Fund annual benefit on May 23 in New York. | AP Photo Clinton taunts Trump: 'People in covfefe houses shouldn't throw covfefe'

President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton returned to peak campaign mudslinging form Wednesday night, trading barbs on Twitter over the former Democratic nominee's electoral defeat and the president's errant "covfefe" tweet just after midnight on Wednesday morning.

The president tweeted a response to recent comments by Clinton claiming she was defeated last November in part because she was "the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win.”


Her statements, which broadly attributed her loss to the Democratic National Committee, the Russian cyberattacks and herself, drew Trump's ire.

"Crooked Hillary Clinton now blames everybody but herself, refuses to say she was a terrible candidate," Trump tweeted, adopting his familiar 2016 shorthand for the Democratic nominee. "Hits Facebook & even Dems & DNC."

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The former secretary of state returned fire within the hour, responding directly to the post: "People in covfefe houses shouldn't throw covfefe."

Earlier Wednesday, Clinton mocked Trump at Recode’s Code Conference for an incomplete Twitter post sent from Trump's personal twitter account, that read, in its entirety, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.”

Clinton suggested the ill-conceived post may have been "a hidden message to the Russians.”

The White House on Wednesday, however, refused to acknowledge that the tweet — which quickly went viral, spawning numerous of online memes — was a typo.

“The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said at an off-camera press gaggle at the White House on Wednesday.