Fox News hosts scorched James Comey over a now-deleted Instagram post that MAGAworld perceived as a threat to President Donald Trump’s life.
The issue of Comey’s post–which featured “86” and “47” spelled out in seashells on a beach– dominated the network on Thursday night with hosts Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham weighing in, along with numerous guests.
Watters and Kellyanne Conway called on officials to go after Comey Thursday night after the former FBI director posted the photo to Instagram earlier Thursday.
“Trump’s already faced two assassination attempts,” Watters said on his primetime show. “Comey should know better, and let’s be honest, he probably does.”
“He’s the former FBI director. He had the codes. He knows what it means,” Watters said. “This obviously is a threat to the president’s life, and that’s illegal.”
Conway claimed Comey “knows exactly what he was doing.”
“The FBI director is our chief law enforcement officer,” she said. “The bureau itself spends its days looking for clues like this, particularly against the president of the United States, and particularly one who has had his own life threatened.”
The Secret Service, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security all said they were looking into the matter. The White House the post was “being taken seriously” by the administration.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also answered the call when quizzed by Watters on whether Comey should be jailed over the post.
“James Comey in my view should be held accountable and put behind bars for this,” Gabbard said.
The number “86” is widely understood in the service industry to mean “to toss out” or “to get rid of.” In the wake of assassination attempts on Trump—the 47th president—the term has taken on a darker meaning for MAGA, backed up by a Merriam Webster definition that reads: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’”
WOW: Director of National Intelligence @TulsiGabbard says James Comey should be in jail.”James Comey should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.” pic.twitter.com/QMs02jbjXU
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) May 16, 2025
Comey swiftly deleted the Instagram post after the White House saw it as “deeply concerning” and said it was “being taken seriously.”
“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” he wrote in a follow-up post. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
On her own Thursday night show, Laura Ingraham said Comey “comes across as completely out of it, completely mentally unstable.”
Peter Doocy, Fox News’ White House correspondent, said administration officials who were in the Middle East to join Trump’s tour of the region had yet to comment on Comey’s post.
“There are so many threats that exist against the President of the United States coming from international actors, rogue actors,” he said. “We did not think that we were going to see a former FBI director from here in Abu Dhabi suggesting something like this.”
Meanwhile, over on CNN, Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig brushed off the idea of legal threats against Comey, telling The Source that it was “ridiculous.”
“This is not criminal,” Honig said. “This is not a criminally chargeable threat against the president. It’s political speech. It’s way too broad. It’s stupid, it’s reckless. It’s not criminal. That’s just hyperbole that you’re hearing from the cabinet members there.”
Comey and Trump have long been at odds, starting in the first Trump administration when the president demanded loyalty from the then-FBI director. Trump booted Comey in 2017 as he was leading a probe into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A year later, after Comey published a memoir that delved into his relationship with Trump, the president dismissed him as a “proven leaker and liar.”
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