On a beach in North Carolina, a man photographed some seashells arranged to spell out a number. He posted the photo to Instagram with the caption, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” Then he deleted it.
That man is now facing federal indictment for threatening the life of the President of the United States.
The man is James Comey. The shells spelled out 86 47.
Trump, asked by reporters whether he genuinely feared for his life, replied: “Probably. I don’t know. Based on what I’m seeing out there, yeah.” He then offered a film school tutorial: “If anybody knows anything about crime, they know 86 — it’s a mob term for kill him. You ever see the movies? ‘86 him,’ the mobster says to one of his wonderful associates.”
The mobster movies defense. From the current President of the United States.
Let us, for a moment, talk about what 86 actually means — not in the mob film universe of Donald Trump’s imagination, but in the real world, which the rest of us continue to inhabit. Merriam-Webster defines “eighty-six” as slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to.” It originated in the 1930s as a soda fountain and lunch counter term for an item that was sold out. It then migrated to restaurant kitchens everywhere. It is the vocabulary of prep cooks and line workers and exhausted waitstaff on a Saturday night.
I worked in restaurants. When the chef called 86 on the mahi, it meant the mahi was gone. When you 86’d a table, you cut them off or turned them away. It was kitchen language for removal, disposal, the end of the road for something that had outlived its usefulness. Like a crate of moldy oranges. Like a batch of spoiled pork. Like an administration that has overstayed its welcome.
It is not, in any functional use of the English language, a murder instruction.
For perspective: Gretchen Whitmer appeared on a 2020 television interview with a small figurine displaying “86 45” on a table behind her. Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec — who recently sat for a friendly interview with the acting Attorney General — posted “86 46” on Twitter during Joe Biden’s presidency.
No indictments were filed over figurines. No grand juries were convened over tweets. And the man now signing those indictments? Todd Blanche. The same Todd Blanche who spent years as Donald Trump’s personal defense attorney.
The Department of Justice is being run by the former personal lawyer of the man whose enemies are being prosecuted by the Department of Justice. This is Comey’s second indictment. The first, on unrelated charges, was thrown out by a federal judge after the prosecutor who filed it was found to have not been legally appointed. They dusted themselves off and tried again.
Now let us discuss the man for whom this machinery of terror has been set in motion.
This is the same man who, at a rally in Iowa in February 2016, told his supporters: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them. I’ll pay the legal fees.”
He wasn’t speaking in metaphor. He wasn’t posting beach photography. He was speaking to a crowd, in his own voice, offering financial incentives for physical assault on other Americans.
After a 78-year-old man was caught on video sucker-punching a protester at a Trump rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press that he had instructed his people to look into paying the attacker’s legal fees. He added that the man “got carried away” and “maybe he doesn’t like seeing what’s happening to the country.”
He also said, at a rally in St. Louis, that “nobody wants to hurt each other anymore” — and that protesters “realize there are no consequences.” He appeared to regard this as a problem.
This is the same man who, when Robert Mueller died — a Marine, a Vietnam veteran, a Purple Heart recipient, a man who spent his life in public service — posted to Truth Social minutes after the announcement: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
That is the statement of a sitting president of the United States, published publicly, about the death of an American citizen and decorated military veteran.
No indictment was filed. No grand jury was convened. No acting attorney general held a press conference to announce that celebrating a man’s death “will never be tolerated.”
Because it was Trump who said it.
He made light of the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, which left him with a fractured skull. He mused about “Second Amendment people” as a mechanism to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing judges. He reposted a message from a supporter warning about people rising up to “physically fight” for Trump.
The seashells, apparently, were the line.
Legal experts have noted that prosecutors face a significant hurdle: the Supreme Court in 2023 required that the government show the defendant understood their message would be perceived as a threat and callously disregarded that risk. A photograph of seashells spelling a term that Merriam-Webster defines as “to get rid of” is unlikely to meet that standard.
What this case is likely to meet is a different standard entirely — the standard of what it looks like when a government criminalizes dissent.
Trump can offer to pay the medical bills of the man who punched a stranger at his rally.
He can celebrate the death of a combat veteran in real time.
He can tell crowds that protest has no consequences anymore, in a tone suggesting this is a problem requiring correction.
What he cannot tolerate, apparently, is a retired federal official finding some seashells on a beach.
In the restaurant business, we had a term for inventory that had passed its expiration date, turned, grown something unpleasant in the back of the walk-in, and needed to go before it contaminated everything else.
We called it 86.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​