Former FBI Director James Comey made a spectacle of himself last week with an Instagram post that read “86-47.” It doesn’t take a Navajo codebreaker to discern the meaning: End Donald Trump, our 47th president. By any means necessary.
Trump jokes about pursuing a third term, but that would demand the movement of constitutional mountains, so “86” Trump could only mean one thing.
It meant the same thing on Oct. 18, 2020, when Whitmer had an 86-45 pillow prominent in her background for a Zoom interview on “Meet the Press.”
The media, naturally, had Whitmer’s back. But even as the Detroit Free Press tried to explain 86-45 away as “restaurant industry slang,” it quoted an Urban Dictionary entry that got closer to the truth: “a sneaky way to illustrate one’s support of getting rid of Trump.”
Ten days prior, Whitmer was the alleged victim of a kidnapping plot, which proved to be the October Surprise of the 2020 presidential election. This supposed plot—later revealed to be the product of outsize FBI entrapment—was used as proof that Trump had turned up the political temperature in America to a boil.
Whitmer immediately used her moment in the spotlight to blame Trump.
“Just last week, the President of the United States stood before the American people and refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two Michigan militia groups,” Whitmer said at the time. “‘Stand back and stand by,’ he told them. ‘Stand back and stand by.’ Hate groups heard the President’s words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry, as a call to action. When our leaders speak, their words matter. They carry weight.”
If “stand back and stand by” was a call to kidnapping, what is 86-45? What is 86-47? A canceled restaurant order? These arguments insult our intelligence. I preferred it when deniability was plausible.
If Trump had not been shot in the head once and targeted a second time, we could write this off as too clever by half, the way the media tried it with Whitmer.
When fellow Enjoyer Charlie LeDuff wrote “See You Next Tuesday” to Attorney General Dana Nessel on Twitter, the entire Democrat-media alliance united to condemn the best reporter in Michigan as a pariah.
For the journalists, this was easier than trying to match his output. For the politicians, this was easier than facing his interrogations.
Lansing is a strange place, where mean tweets get you ostracized but calls for assassination are jokes. And looting businesses and assaulting cops, to the point the National Guard was called in to restore order, is just speaking the language of the unheard.
When Democrats are angry, they burn cities. When Democrats feel a loss is imminent, their opposition gets shot. And when Democrats do lose elections, they call publicly for the victor to be “86’d.”
The Democrats aren’t joking about wanting the end of Trump. By any means necessary.
James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Join him in conversation on X @downi75.
