The meaning of 86

“The day you die is just like any other, only shorter.”
— Samuel Beckett

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines  the term to “86”  someone or something as meaning “to get rid of, discard, cancel, or refuse service, particularly in restaurant, bar, or general service settings. It acts as a verb ("let’s 86 that idea") or a noun to indicate an item is out of stock, often originating from 1930s soda fountain or Prohibition-era slang.” Examples of usage include:

Restaurants/Bars: "We have to 86 the salmon" (run out of it) or "Go ahead and 86 that customer" (refuse service/eject them).

General Use: "Let's 86 that plan" (cancel it) or "I'm going to 86 this old couch" (get rid of it).

Historical/Alternative: Refers to a "no" or "nix" to an order, or, in more extreme contexts, to eliminate/kill.

Merriam-Webster.

With that background, it brings us to the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, probably the one man ironically most responsible for making Trump the President of the United States. The newest Comey charge arises from  a web posting he made on social media almost a year ago while on vacation in North Carolina. The post was a photograph of seashells arranged to say “86 47,” combining the slang term “86,” often used to mean dismiss or remove, with an apparent reference to Mr. Trump, the country’s 47th President. After an outcry of social media and negative news comments, Comey pulled the photograph saying he was unaware of any violent connotations when he posted it. But Trump and his supporters seized on the posting to suggest that Comey had advocated the assassination of the President, a federal crime, claiming that the meaning of the term “86” was to kill. And on April 28, 2026, shortly following  an assassination attempt on the President’s life by another man,  it was reported that Comey had been indicted for threatening the President of the United States.

Comey says he has confidence in our judicial system. But what else can he say at this point, since that is all that stands between him and  a would-be tyrant who wants absolute monarchical authority. The precedents, however, are not so comforting. First there is the power of the State to bend the judiciary to serve its purposes -- see Nazi Germany or Russian or Chinese courts of today, or even our current US Supreme Court stamp of approval on gerrymandering just before the next federal election.. There is nothing especially reassuring about the ability of the third branch of American government to stand up to a persistent authoritarian executive‘s exercise of power.

Nonetheless, I really don’t have much sympathy for Comey. He made his fame as the chief prosecutor of Martha Stewart for insider trading. Whatever the truth, the sentence he sought was excessive and punitive. He clearly wanted to take down a powerful independent woman. And he seems to follow that same route in 2016 when days before the election he tried to take down another powerful woman, Hilary Clinton. Indeed, we may owe Comey for Trump’s surprise triumph. But Trump gives no thanks and has no friends. And having decided Comey is his enemy, Trump intends to take him down  and pursue him to the ends of the earth. Ironically, Comey the predator has become the prey. That kind of prosecutorial power to criminally punish your perceived enemies, concentrated now in a unitary executive, is not one that the courts are likely to be able to effectively resist. Eventually, in every society, the court system becomes captured by the authoritarians in office. Why will this time be different?

I wish Comey the best. I don’t think the term “86” was intended to have its extreme meaning of “kill” or “assassinate.”  In my view, Comey self-evidently was advocating for nothing more than the removal of Trump from office, something a majority of US Senators voted in favor of in 2020 — unless of course the prosecutors have other hard evidence of a more sinister intent. Otherwise,  I am sorry to live in a land where advocating the removal from office of the chief executive can result in criminal prosecution. But that is the land we live in now.