Comey’s “86 47” Post Gets Terrorwashed

When did everything become terrorism?

The post

For once an FBI guy got a visit from police for his social media post. How’s that for irony?

If you haven’t heard, former FBI Director James Comey committed the cardinal sin of going online while on vacation and posting some seashells on a beach spelling out the numbers “86 47,” referring to Trump (the 47th president) and 86 (defined below). Predictably, this sent the Trump administration into DEFCON 1, precipitating a visit from Secret Service.

By strange coincidence I had just been laughing about an FBI media release describing how the vast majority of counterterrorism leads turn out to be “just a keyboard warrior or somebody who has some mental health issues that really need to be addressed,” which seemed an apt description of Comey’s post.

For the former FBI Director, who oversaw the Russian interference and collusion investigations in 2016 before being fired by Donald Trump, to still be simmering about it a decade later (while on vacation!) is a lot of things, but a serious threat? Come on.

The idea that an incurable dork like Comey — writer of cornball books called things like “A Higher Loyalty” and whose Twitter alter ego was a reference to the public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr (really) — is capable of any more violence than making people like me want to die from secondhand embarrassment is, of course, laughable. Comey promptly removed the post, disavowing violence of any kind.

But it was too late. The great terror-washing machine had already swung into action.

Sebastian Gorka, the brownshirt re-enactor who is the White House’s top counterterrorism official, wasted no time declaring Comey’s Instagram post terrorism.

“Hey @Comey we’re in the business of Counterterrorism,” he said on X. “You committed a crime by threatening President @realDonaldTrump’s life.”

Other top national security officials responded similarly, including:

• Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence: “It's a veiled call to action to murder the sitting President of the United States … I’m very concerned for his life and James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and be put behind bars for this.”

• Kash Patel, FBI Director: “We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey, directed at President Trump. We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran. Primary jurisdiction is with SS on these matters and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.

• Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security: “Today, federal agents from @SecretService interviewed disgraced former FBI Director Comey regarding a social media post calling for the assassination of President Trump. I will continue to take all measures necessary to ensure the protection of @POTUS Trump. This is an ongoing investigation.”

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any dumber, anti-Trump commentator Brian Krassenstein texted me that his brother, Ed (also an anti-Trump commentator), had received a visit from the Secret Service for his mocking posts of the “86 47” number. 

“The agent said that they were sent from Washington and basically couldn’t believe that he had to come,” Brian told me. 

I couldn’t believe it, either. The Krassensteins, for those not familiar, are dad-joke-generators whose political material is offensive only in its cringeyness (a representative example: the anti-Trump book they co-authored, titled “How the People Trumped Ronald Plump”). Their getting a visit by the Secret Service seemed so beyond comprehension that I asked if they had any video evidence of the visit. Brian sent me a video showing a Secret Service agent flashing a badge in front of his brother’s house. 

When did everything become terrorism? And when did seemingly everyone forget the first rule of online: that it isn’t real. From the first time I logged onto an AOL chatroom as a kid, it was obvious that the internet is a sewer not to be taken literally. I say this lovingly! I’ve been swimming laps in the information super sewer ever since.

It’s more clear than ever that the moral panic of our time is the fear of domestic terrorism. The ‘80s was a decade of recovered memories, the and ’90s had the Satanic Panic, then al Qaeda lurking around every corner, and on and on. Today the Trump administration want us to live in the Terror ‘20s.

The phobia has infected more than just Trump appointees. The FBI is busy investigating “Nihilist Violent Extremists,” as I’ve written, who they insist in court filings pose a threat to not just the president but to civilization itself.

I became a target of the terrorwashing craze when I published the 271-page JD Vance Dossier and seemingly every MAGA influencer on X joined arms to accuse me of inciting violence for including Vance’s (publicly available) home address. The freakout resulted in my account being banned as Elon Musk declared me “evil.” Musk had earlier banned an account posting public flight data pertaining to his private jet, which he said amounted to “assassination coordinates.” Terrorwashing turns mundane public information into some kind of existential threat. 

While the panic has definitely intensified under Trump, it did not begin with him. For the past decade, crimes have been met with a predictable chorus demanding that one’s political opponents be charged with terrorism. Demoralized by the somnolence of Washington, people want action and out of desperation see justice in the sledgehammer that is the national security state.  

The Trump administration is the most trigger happy in this respect. But the Democrats take part in this too, elevating the gormless idiots aimlessly wandering the halls of Congress on January 6 to the level of terrorists and even insurrectionists who threaten to topple democracy.

Now someone has bombed a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, Florida. The suspect is a 25 year old whose manifesto reportedly cites the lack of consent involved in being born.

The FBI will coin some new shiny new term like “anti-natalist violent extremist,” as though this troubled man wouldn’t have been spurred to violence by some other ideology had that one not existed. The Bureau will inevitably label the incident an act of domestic terrorism, and the media will spread alarm about the dire threat that no one will remember in a few years.

Update: I just realized the FBI has already declared it an “act of terrorism.” 

— Edited by William M. Arkin