Everyone Is Being Really Stupid About Trump Non-Assassination Non-Threat — Including Trump And Comey

Tommy ChristopherMay 16th, 2025, 1:59 pm
 

Pretty much everyone involved is being really effing stupid about former FBI Director James Comey’s alleged “assassination threat” against President Donald Trump — including and especially Trump and Comey.

Comey is in hot water over an Instagram post featuring a photo of seashells spelling out the numbers “86” and “47” and the caption, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

MAGA went insane over the post, along the lines of Donald Trump Jr.’s declaration that Comey was “calling for my dad to be murdered.”

Comey later deleted the post and left a note disavowing any violent intent:

I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. 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.

Trump got into the act by lashing out at Comey:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear. Now, he wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant. And he did it for a reason. And he was hit so hard because people like me. And they like what’s happening with our country. Our country’s become respected again. And all this. And he’s calling for the assassination of the president.

BRET BAIER: Obviously, he apologized and said he wasn’t calling for violence.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, he apologized because he was hit.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: But look, he’s a very bad

BRET BAIER: What do you want to see happen?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t want to take a position on it, because that’s going to be up to Pam and all of the great people. But I will say this, I think it’s a terrible thing. And when you add his history to that, if he had a clean history, he doesn’t. He’s a dirty cop, he’s a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency, but I’m going to let them make that decision.

Cable news chimed in with segments damning Comey to Hell and/or prison (Fox News) or mocking the idea that this constituted a criminal threat, complete with legal analysis (CNN), and pearl-clutching from others.

Trump opponents pointed out all the times MAGA people said “86 46” — and still sell the anti-President Joe Biden merch to this day.

It pains me to have to reiterate this, but obviously anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant or 1 million other settings knows that 86 means to remove or omit something. That is the commonly understood definition, meaning that the seashells arranged by someone, who totally wasn’t James Comey doing it himself, so he could take the picture would most commonly be understood to mean remove Trump.

To suggest that the only interpretation, or even the main interpretation, would be able to assassinate Trump is effing stupid.

Therefore, it’s even stupider to suggest that he should go to jail for this, which is what some Trump officials have said. It is slightly less stupid for Trump to insist that Comey understood this assassination threat to be the meaning.

To illustrate the stupidity of these claims, many have pointed out the number of times that pro-Trump fanatics used “86  46” against Joe Biden, saying, “Well why wasn’t anybody mad about this threat?”

As an illustrative comparison, it works. But it also serves to point out the difference between the two. Nobody ever shot President Biden. When Trump survived that assassination attempt, the context of “86 47” changed. It’s not the same thing.

So it’s also really stupid of James Comey not to have thought of this possible meeting before he posted that picture. Even stupider is the fact that Comey doesn’t seem to realize that literally nobody likes him. He has tried to recast himself as some sort of Zen resistance poet in a resistance that he is not welcome in. Nobody is going to be inclined to defend this dude.

But he did the right thing by deleting the post, for all the good it did him. Now that Trump has been nicked by a bullet, it is wise to be careful how we speak about him.

Another absurd thing, although definitely not the most certain thing, are all of the cable news segments soberly dissecting the legal exposure involved in saying “86 47”. Can we please deep-six those?

Watch above via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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