MAGA world erupted in fury on Thursday night over a social media post from former FBI Director James Comey, claiming that his image of seashells spelling out the numbers “8647” constituted a “threat” on President Donald Trump’s life.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant…That meant ‘assassination,’” Trump fumed in an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Friday.
Yet, while the Trump administration is investigating Comey and members of the president’s cabinet are even saying he “should be behind bars,” many of the same people raging that this was a call for assassination had previously used the same term to refer to their political opponents – including Joe Biden.
Matt Gaetz, the former GOP congressman and one-time attorney general nominee who now hosts a show on far-right network One America News, jumped aboard the outrage train over the Comey post. With Republicans and Trump officials falling over each other to express indignation over the ex-FBI director’s image, Gaetz retweeted a letter from Rep. Andy Ogles “urging an immediate joint investigation” by the FBI and Secret Service into Comey.
Meanwhile, just last year, Gaetz proudly tweeted that he’d “now 86’d” former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Sen. Mitch McConnell from their leadership posts, adding that “better days are ahead for the Republican Party.”
The Independent asked Gaetz to explain the difference between his tweet and the post Comey sent, especially as a number of people were calling him out online for hypocrisy.
“I was speaking in the past tense about things that had already happened,” Gaetz said. “Comey was putting out a call for future action. These are distinct.”
Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate conspiracist who has become one of the most influential voices in MAGA media, has been extremely outspoken about Comey’s picture of shells on the beach, claiming it was a call to action.
“The fmr director of the FBI is calling for left-wing assassins to target our president and kill him. Have no idea why he hasn't been arrested yet,” the Real America’s Voice host tweeted on Thursday night.
However, in 2022, Posobiec tweeted out the numbers “8646” without any other context. That code, meanwhile, has been used on anti-Biden merchandise to call for the impeachment of the former president, with many of the shirts still on sale at eBay and Amazon.
Posobiec did not respond to a request for comment.
Indeed, the Gaetz and Posobiec tweets – along with the MAGA t-shirts emblazoned with 8646 – prompted a number of liberals and progressives to accuse Trump world of a double standard when it came to their anger over Comey.
Posting a screenshot of a social media post from Trump showing an image of Biden hogtied in a pickup truck bed, Zeteo founder Mehdi Hasan pushed back on Sen. Mike Lee’s complaint that Democrats would have tried to throw Trump in prison if he tweeted “8646” a year ago.
“Trump posted a picture of Biden bound in the back of a truck, and multiple Republican and conservative allies of yours (Matt Gaetz, Jack Posobiec) posted the term 86, the latter in relation to Biden. So, sit this one out,” Hasan wrote.
Damin Toell, a Brooklyn attorney known for his snarky social media feed, took specific aim at Posobiec. After former GOP Congressman Anthony D’Esposito claimed Comey was “calling for blood” and issued a “kill code” on the president, Toell responded with a screenshot of Posobiec’s “8646” tweet and tweeted: “IT’S A KILL CODE.”
“Jack was Navy intelligence,” he added in a separate post. “Literally the deep state. He knew what this code means. He has no plausible deniability. He was activating terrorist cells. Arrest him.”
Economist and investigative journalist James Surowiecki reacted to Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway’s assertion that Comey’s post was a “ call to assassinate President Trump” by insisting that “no one actually believes it was” before bringing up the anti-Biden merchandise that’s still on the market.
“During Biden's presidency, MAGA sold ‘8646’ t-shirts and bumper stickers and decals. No one thought that meant they were calling for Biden to be killed,” he noted, adding an eBay link to an “8646 In Distressed US Flag Anti Biden Decal Bumper Sticker” for sale.
“Are you investigating the ‘8646’ anti-Biden T-shirts still selling on Amazon?” The Bulwark’s Cathy Young asked in response to FBI Director Kash Patel’s tweet declaring that he was in communication with the Secret Service about a potential investigation into Comey.
Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017 and has since become an outspoken critic of the president, claimed amid the brouhaha that there was no intent of violence in his post and subsequently deleted the picture.
“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.”
Meanwhile, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “86” means “to throw out” or “get rid of,” and it derives from a century-old slang term for “sold out” of merchandise or food. The “47” in Comey’s image is construed to mean Trump because he is now the 47th president.
The use of “86” as a verb appears to have first developed at a pub in Greenwich Village, which was located at 86 Bedford St. in Manhattan. Whenever a drunken patron was tossed from the bar for poor and disorderly behavior, it was known as “86-ing” them.
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