Last month, Fox News star Jesse Watters melted down over James Comey’s “8647” social media post, insisting that it proved the former FBI director “obviously was trying to put out a hit on” President Donald Trump.
Three weeks later, the MAGA host let slip that his outrage over Comey was all a performative show when he reacted to the firing of Terry Moran by celebrating that the ABC News correspondent had been “86’d” by the network.
MAGA world absolutely erupted in mid-May when Comey, a vocal critic of the president who was fired by Trump as FBI chief in 2017, posted an image of seashells on the beach that were arranged to spell out the numbers 8647. Based on “86” being a restaurant-based slang term meaning to “get rid of” or “throw out,” Trump immediately claimed that the image “meant assassination,” as he is the 47th president.
The Secret Service would soon launch an investigation into Comey, who claimed there was no “dark intention” and that it was “crazy” to suggest he was trying to get the president killed. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard would tell Watters that the ex-FBI director should be “put behind bars” over the since-deleted post, while FBI deputy director Dan Bongino fumed that Comey “brought shame to the FBI again” with the image.
Of course, many of the conservatives who were apoplectic about Comey’s Instagram pic had previously used similar terms in reference to other politicians or impeaching former President Joe Biden, and pro-Trump retailers are still selling “8646” merchandise.
Matt Gaetz, the former GOP congressman who now hosts a show on far-right conspiracy channel One America News, once boasted that he had “86’d” several prominent Republicans from leadership roles. “I was speaking in the past tense about things that had already happened,” Gaetz told The Independent last month. “Comey was putting out a call for future action. These are distinct.”
Watters, meanwhile, was one of the loudest voices in pro-Trump media condemning the former FBI director and calling for action to be taken over the “death threat” against the president.
“He obviously was trying to put out a hit on Trump, got caught, and deleted it,” Watters grumbled on the May 16 broadcast of The Five, adding: “Anybody with common sense knows what this guy meant.”
He would go on to complain that Comey was “calling for [Trump’s] head” and that he hoped the Secret Service would soon pay him a visit “because this can’t stand.”
During his primetime show later that evening, Watters aired a lengthy segment about the Comey post and even went so far as to call for the feds to check for “sand under [Comey’s] fingernails” to see if he was the one who arranged the seashells on the beach. He also took issue with mainstream and liberal media outlets not taking the “threat” against Trump seriously.
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“The media pretending not to know what 8647 means, the same way they pretended not to know that MS-13 was on an American dad’s knuckles,” Watters fumed. “Suddenly, it is legal to threaten the president's life.”
Fast forward a few weeks, though, and it appears that the Fox News host has now learned that “86” could have a more ambiguous meaning.
“ABC just 86’d Terry Moran for calling Stephen Miller a hateful bigot,” he declared on Tuesday night, referencing Moran’s termination following a late-night tweet criticizing Trump and Miller. “This was probably the easiest thing that ABC ever had to do.”
As he spoke with fellow Fox News host Julie Banderas about ABC parting ways with its longtime correspondent and gaining “credibility with the White House,” an on-air graphic blared “TERRY MORAN 86’D BY ABC” across the screen.
Meanwhile, Watters’ sudden realization that the term “86” doesn’t necessarily mean murder was not lost on his critics, who were more than happy to point out his hypocrisy and faux indignation on the Comey situation.
“The entire ‘86'd’ thing was basically a litmus test for who is an honest broker and who is not,” American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick reacted. “Those who seriously claimed it was a death threat simply should not be trusted to make honest arguments.”
“Starting to think these guys may not be entirely on the level,” Media Matters writer Matt Gertz flatly stated, sharing screenshots of Watters’ segments from last month and Tuesday night.
