KTTH OPINION

Rantz: Laughable left-wing media double standard on James Comey ’86 47′ threat

May 16, 2025, 10:45 AM | Updated: 10:50 am

86 47 James Comey...

Former FBI Director James Comey testifies during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Thursday, June 8, 2017, in Washington. Now he's got nothing to do, so he posts photos making light of violence against Trump with '86 47.' (Photo: Alex Brandon, The Associated Press)

(Photo: Alex Brandon, The Associated Press)

Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey posted a photo of seashells spelling out “86 47.” After blowback, considering it’s a clear comment about violence against President Donald Trump, who nearly died from an assassination attempt, Comey deleted it. He claimed that while he thought it was political, he didn’t know “86” referenced violence.

Left-wing media shrugged it off and pushed the lazy narrative that conservatives are overreacting and pretending this was a threat.

When then-candidate Donald Trump criticized “war hawk” Liz Cheney for pushing wars, suggesting she wouldn’t be so quick to start armed conflict if she was the one standing there with guns pointed at her, the left-wing press exploded. They framed it as an explicit call for a firing squad.

Where’s the consistency?

James Comey on ’86 47′ controversy

On May 15, Comey shared an Instagram post captioned “Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” showing shells arranged to read “86 47” — slang for “get rid of” and, in some circles, “kill” the 47th president. Soon, Secret Service and DHS investigations were underway, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling it a “threat” that “will respond appropriately.”

Comey’s dishonest defense? He “didn’t realize some folks associate it with violence,” and, being “opposed to violence in all circumstances,” he took it down. This is, of course, a nonsense claim. He posted a message he thought was political, but didn’t understand what “86” meant in this context?

What did he ٳ󾱲԰it meant? Comey doesn’t explain. One suspects that as a one-time FBI director, he’d at least have Google. Are we supposed to pretend he came upon this and didn’t do it at the time? I guess so.

Trump supporters and conservative media expressed outrage. Left-wing media focused on the outrage, not Comey’s conduct.

Muted coverage

ʴDZپ the story not around Comey’s conduct, but the reaction from concerned Republicans. It noted three paragraphs in which Republicans were simply “interpreting the numbers ’86’ as suggesting he should be killed, though the phrase means ‘eject, dismiss or remove’ or ‘get rid of’ someone in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.” Like Comey, ʴDZپreporter Gregory Svirnovskiy is pretending that “86” has never meant to kill.

Similarly, CNN that Comey simply “takes down Instagram post after conservative uproar.”

But then there’s Donald Trump vs. Liz Cheney

Contrast “86 47” coverage with Trump’s rally in Glendale, Arizona last November, when he noted that Cheney wouldn’t be so eager to send Americans to war if she were in the same position as our troops.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” Trump said. “And let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Left-wing outlets didn’t just blast the remark; they painted it as a clear-cut execution threat.

Violent rhetoric!

ʴDZپ their coverage that Trump “reverts to violent rhetoric.” It claimed, in the first paragraph, that Trump “cast a menacing new shadow over the final days of the presidential race, stoking fresh backlash against the former president’s frequent and increasingly violent threats targeting political opponents.”

And, again, CNN followed suit, falsely claiming in the that Trump said “Liz Cheney should be fired upon in escalation of violent rhetoric against his opponents.” This simply didn’t happen.

Consistency? Not with Trump coverage

Left-wing media is simply unwilling, and perhaps unable, to treat Trump the way they treat his opponents.

Truly broken people are covering the news and, consequently, they aren’t sensitive to violent rhetoric around the man who faced two assassination attempts, and was millimeters away from death, because they hate him.

But if Trump makes a comment that they can willfully take out of context to make him seem violent, they’ll take that opportunity and run with it.

For what it’s worth, I think Comey was normalizing a joke about violence against Trump. He wasn’t calling for violence, he was making light of it, even though he knows Trump was millimeters away from being assassinated. Like the left-wing media outlets providing cover for him, Comey is a broken man desperate for attention and avenues to express his disdain for Trump. It wasn’t criminal; it was criminally despicable and in bad taste.

Pick a lane

If they’re going to treat veiled threats as mortal sins (or take unthreatening comments out of context to pretend otherwise), that standard has to apply across the board.

The blood-curdling op-eds accusing Trump of paving the way for firing squads didn’t demand nuance; they demanded outrage. But when it’s one of their heroes tossing the word “86” around, it’s just “beach vibes” and “misunderstood slang.” The real story here isn’t that Comey didn’t know what “86 47” meant; it’s that the media pretends not to notice when one of their own does it.

So here’s a proposal: pick a lane.

Listen to The Jason Rantz Show on weekday afternoons from 3 p.m. -7 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here. Follow Jason Rantz on ,,, and .

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