James Comey Enjoys Long Walks On The Beach… So MAGA Gonna Send Him To El Salvador Prison Camp

This article began its life as “James Comey Enjoys Long Walks On The Beach, Cringey Donald Trump Trolling” because the former FBI Director posted an Instagram from his beach vacation having arranged shells into “86 47” like a total dork. Page the hashtag resistance… Comey wants to 86 the 47th president! It’s not like the idea of ousting Donald Trump is a particularly wild sentiment considering the guy already got impeached twice back when he was 45.

That original draft made some wisecracks at Comey’s expense and closed off by flagging a random, unhinged Trump supporter brain-addled enough to suggest that this post amounts to an assassination threat.

But because unhinged, brain-addled Trump supporters are no longer limited to social media but, indeed, occupy senior administration positions, we watched in real time as the story chugged a bottle of Everclear, put on a tinfoil crown, and started demanding treason trials.

Anyway, here’s Comey’s Insta:

A lot of the early, non-crazy reactions — which we would’ve talked about in the original story when the discourse about this was still remotely sane — called out Comey as pathetic and immature for being obsessed with the president who fired him years ago. It is dumb, but not appreciably dumber than any other social media warrior slogan. Is it any more cringe than if he wrote out the “Hands Off” thing? It’s certainly no more childish than having to hear “Let’s Go Brandon” for four years. It didn’t strike me as “obsessed,” just par for the course for a Boomer with a social media account and a political opinion.

Then…

Normally, people try to avoid the “SS” as an abbreviation. Since, oh, the 1940s or so. But you have to appreciate the unintentional honesty of a moron.

Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence went on Fox to further stoke the fake outrage campfire.

Click over to watch the whole video if you want, but the gist is that Gabbard pretends Comey’s post is “issuing a call to assassinate” Trump and therefore he should be in jail. Since “86” just means to eject someone, it’s quite the leap to characterize this as “issuing a call to assassinate.” If Donald Trump telling a mob of slack-jawed inbreds to “fight like hell” before they stormed the Capitol isn’t criminal incitement — and it isn’t — then 86 is nowhere close to a threat.

Does anyone who’s not hooked on 1940s film noir even know what “86” means? Would anyone even use that term to communicate to a person under 70?

I stand corrected… if anyone knows how to talk to the youth of America, it’s Gaetz.

Gabbard’s interview is also completely batshit to suggest anyone, anywhere cares about James Comey’s opinion about anything. The Trump people clearly hate him and the Democrats still blame him for Hillary Clinton’s inability to see the upper Midwest slipping away.

My Flynn Rider meme opinion continues to be that Comey doesn’t deserve the hate he gets for Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. Comey went out of his way over that summer to publicly declare Hillary Clinton’s private server a mistake, but nonetheless benign, basically ending the phony scandal’s influence on the race. But once he did that, he put himself on the hook to correct his testimony when agents dropped new evidence in his lap. He assumed the relevant congressional committee would keep this development confidential or at least properly contextualized as a mere formality. But since that committee included “Republicans,” the result was a hair-on-fire public pronouncement that Hillary Clinton was obviously guilty and the media hyped every bit of that sideshow except the part where Comey predictably came back and said, “see, there’s still absolutely nothing here and this just confirms what I already told you!”

But, again, that’s not a popular opinion. The rest of the left-of-center universe reviles Comey as the proximate cause of Trump’s presidency. There is no middle class Women’s March alum out there hanging on every James Comey Instagram post waiting for the codeword to leave their bottomless mimosa brunch to go all John Wilkes Booth.

He got fewer than 200 likes on an engagement-bait Instagram post… he’s not inspiring a secret army.

More even-keeled commentators are already shrugging off voices like these, dismissing it all as the standard fake outrage that’s become the coin of the realm in the conservative attention economy. Before $TRUMP became the literal coin of the realm. No one is really going to prosecute James Comey for a goof with some sea shells, they say urging everyone to look the other way and stop feeding the trolls.

Under normal circumstances, it would be safe to assume that Patel and Gabbard are deeply cynical grifters who know full well that this is nonsense, but understand that they can work their fanbase of gormless twits into a froth over it for 48 hours.

But Patel and Gabbard — even among Trump officials — are not normal. Kash Patel maintained a personal enemies list like a dimestore Dick Nixon and Gabbard routinely traffics in conspiracy theories. These are no longer “normal” circumstances. The inmates are literally running the asylum here.

Honestly, the only thing working in Comey’s favor as he attempts to dodge the unmarked van of goons ready to disappear him to El Salvador is that Patel and Gabbard aren’t the ones responsible for looking into this matter.

Thankfully, the bulwark against fascism here is… the SS.

Uh-oh, Jim, you in danger, girl.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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