No, James Comey Shouldn't Go To Jail For 'Threatening' Trump, He Should Go To Jail For Creating This Stupid Timeline

No, it doesn't mean assassinated. Come the fuck on.

We had long entertained hopes of never writing the name “James Comey” ever again. Unless it was for something fun like “Former FBI Director James Comey attended the Met Gala in ostrich feathers and a gown designed for him by Stella McCartney.” Or “Former FBI Director James Comey was last seen walking towards a railyard carrying a bindle and whistling John Lee Hooker’s ‘Hobo Blues.’” Or maybe “Former FBI Director James Comey was arrested breaking into a sorority house while carrying a ten-gallon bucket of Ranch dressing and wearing a wetsuit.”

Unfortunately, Comey did something not nearly as interesting as any of that: He posted something on Instagram on Thursday that wingnuts took as a threat towards God-Emperor Donald Trump. The resultant shrieking might very well have caused the planet to vibrate so hard that its orbit shifted.

Comey posted a picture of the numbers “86 47” written out with seashells, adding the caption “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” Since “86” is a fairly common term for getting rid of something, Trump supporters immediately took this as an assassination threat.

The exact origin of using “86” as shorthand for getting rid of something isn’t clear, but it is old restaurant slang that goes back decades. It can be a shorthand way of saying you won’t serve a customer or need to throw a customer out of the restaurant. It can also be a shorthand way of saying the kitchen is out of a dish or an ingredient.

Now if you are Kayleigh McEnany and you host “Outnumbered” on Fox, you can point to a definition of 86 as meaning to kill someone in the Urban Dictionary. We doubt Comey is up on such slang. And if that’s the only place you can find that particular usage of the term, then we feel confident in saying it does not generally mean what you claim it means, no matter how badly you may wish otherwise for ratings purposes.

Personally, we don’t think a former FBI director who was planning on assassinating the president would announce it with a vague Instagram post. And Trump’s people know it too. But any excuse to swoon upon their fainting couches.

Here, for example, is Director of National Intelligence and lab partner who was a little too enthusiastic for the frog dissection module Tulsi Gabbard telling Jesse Watters that it was time to put Comey in the slammer:

Here is current FBI Director Kash Patel, having crawled out of whatever Vegas nightclub he was drunk in, to let everyone know he’s on top of it:

Sen. Mike Lee, if you are literally speechless, why can we hear you speaking?

And on and on and on. Even Trump got to comment on it:

We know it’s a useless gesture to mention this, but Trump has called for political violence against his opponents many times, and his followers have responded with, you know, political violence. Like that whole January 6 thing, we know he heard about it, even Fox had to cover it.

Comey's post was such perfect Fox bait, such a guaranteed attention-grabber, that a more cynical mind might wonder if he has another bad novel coming out and wanted some publicity.

Oh, would you look at that:

Whatever Comey’s motivations, he won’t get any sympathy from yr Wonkette. This was an incredibly stupid thing to do because the Secret Service will now have a chat with him. But that’s his problem.

And we won’t toss any sympathy his way because the wingnuts are attacking him in every forum known to humanity. Again, his problem.

No, what we are annoyed about is that this whole “someone said to 86 Donald Trump” blowup has happened before. We either didn’t hear about it the first time, or we had blocked it from our beautiful brain as a survival mechanism. We’ve had to do that a lot in recent years. It has been a long decade.

But it sounds as if the “He wants to assassinate the president, burn him” drama was just as stupid the first time around.

Back in 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave an interview to “Meet the Press” from her home. This was right after the nation found out that the FBI had blown up a plot by Trump fans to kidnap Whitmer and one day after Trump got an entire rally in the state to chant “Lock her up” about their governor.

While Whitmer was criticizing Trump for the volatility he encourages with his rhetoric, some eagle-eyed viewers spotted a pin on a table behind her that read “8645.” Can you guess what happened next? Tell us, Detroit Free Press:

“Whitmer is encouraging assassination attempts against President Trump,” Trump's campaign alleged, explaining that “86 can be shorthand for killing someone.”

Apparently, there was a whole raft of “86 45” merchandise for sale on Amazon and Etsy during Trump’s first term. Which naturally leads one to wonder if the nuts came back with any merchandise labeled with “86 46” when Joe Biden became president.

One shouldn’t wonder too hard, though. There was a lot. There were T-shirts, bumper stickers, decals, hats. Someone on RedBubble made greeting cards. It was a whole industry.

And as noted on social media, talk of 86’ing 46 was not uncommon from many of the same people who think James Comey should spend the rest of his life in a SuperMax prison:

For his part, Comey claims he had no idea anyone associates the number 86 with violence. Which is probably true, he seems pretty dumb:

“I posted a picture earlier of some shells I saw on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” he wrote in a separate post. “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.”

The Secret Service is still going to call you, buddy. If it hasn’t already.

To sum up: Everything is still stupid.

[Detroit Free Press / The Atlantic / Mediaite]

Wonkette is brought to you by the numbers “86” and the letters “Dear God these people are all insane.”