Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher slammed coverage of former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial “86 47” social media post as “f**king stupid” and far overblown.
Christopher joined Jim Acosta on The Jim Acosta Show this week to discuss a Mediaite column he penned, in which he argued “everyone is being really stupid” over Comey’s post, including Comey himself and President Donald Trump.
Comey posted — and then deleted — a photo of himself on a beach where shells spelled out the message “86 47.” Trump and his supporters have accused Comey of inciting violence with his post. Trump said Comey straight-up called for an “assassination.”
As Acosta noted on the podcast, 86 can mean to “eject” or “cancel” someone. In a statement following backlash to the post, Comey said he was unaware of the more nefarious usage of “86.”
“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he said.
“None of this is assassinate or kill or anything like that,” Acosta said after reading the definitions of “86.”
“They’ve got legal analysts on TV saying, ‘well, can he be put in jail for this?’ It’s fucking stupid. This is the shit that Trump does to us.
Acosta noted that he was with the Trump campaign in 2016 when Comey infamously released a letter announcing the continuation of a probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, just days before the presidential election. Trump’s team, Acosta said, thought they won “the fucking Super Bowl.”
“Pretty much everybody I know, their first reaction to anything he says is, ‘Well, fuck James Comey,’ you know what I mean? Like, who gives a fuck? That’s one of the points I made in the column is nobody likes this guy. Like, who was he for, you know?” Christopher asked.
“I know. He kind of fucked everything up to begin with back in 2016, releasing that letter 11 days before the 2016 election. I remember it well because that was on the campaign trail with Donald Trump that day, and they thought they had just won the fucking Super Bowl when James Comey did that,” Acosta responded.
“And they did!” Christopher said.
Check out the full exchange below:
JIM AOSTA: I don’t know what the hell is going on, this “86 47” thing. I looked
it up in the dictionary. This is what 86 says according to, I believe it’s Webster’s or the Oxford Dictionary, I googled this, I did a Google thing. It says “eject or bar someone from a restaurant, bar, etc. They were accused of cheating in ’86 from their favorite casino. That’s the example they use for that for 86. Another one was reject, discard, or cancel. None of this is assassinate or kill or anything like that. I suppose if you really want to go down that road, there are some people who might say, okay, that’s what it means, but you wrote about how this whole thing is just completely nuts and silly.”TOMMY CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, it’s completely idiotic and, you know, I can’t believe that the — Look, it’s obviously idiotic to say the only way you can interpret this is “this is an assassination [call],” but what really gets me is the discussion around this. They’ve got legal analysts on TV saying, “well, can he be put in jail for this?” It’s fucking stupid. This is the shit that Trump does to us. I mean, this is an absurd example, but, like, that’s pretty much what all cable news is now. It’s just testing out the stupid shit that Trump does against, like, reality and it’s like,I just wanna scream, “Wake up!”ACOSTA: Yeah, it is sort of like the buffet line for his shit sandwiches that he likes to dish out on a daily basis, but you know, my thing is that — and we get accused of taking the bait and the bright shiny objects and everything — I mean, honestly, who cares if James Comey takes a picture of some shells on a beach? I really don’t care. These are things I don’t about.CHRISTOPHER: Pretty much everybody I know, their first reaction to anything he says is, “Well, fuck James Comey,” you know what I mean? Like, who gives a fuck? That’s one of the points I made in the column is nobody likes this guy. Like, who was he for, you know?ACOSTA: I know. He kind of fucked everything up to begin with back in 2016, releasing that letter 11 days before the 2016 election. I remember it well because that was on the campaign trail with Donald Trump that day, and they thought they had just won the fucking Super Bowl when James Comey did that.CHRISTOPHER: And they did!ACOSTA: Comey, get a burner account! You can post all the goddamn shells you want!
Watch above via The Jim Acosta Show.