86 Him

In May 2025, former FBI Director James Comey was vacationing on the North Carolina coast. During a walk along the beach, he came across seashells that someone had arranged to form a four-digit number. Comey photographed them and posted the picture on Instagram with the caption, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

Trump allies quickly manufactured an assassination threat out of the post. Comey removed the photograph, explaining that the violent interpretation had never occurred to him and that he opposed violence. Trump then personally endorsed that interpretation, insisting the number meant Comey wanted him assassinated. The administration subsequently turned that interpretation into a federal investigation and, eventually, an indictment.

Donald Trump explained that “86” is a Mafia term meaning “kill.” To make the point, he asked, “You ever see the movies?”

Well, yes. I have seen the movies.

If Mafia movies are evidence, The Godfather is Exhibit A. It is by far the greatest movie ever made and universally considered the ultimate Mafia movie, the standard against which every other organized-crime film is measured. And, for the record, I have also seen The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III, so Trump’s use of the plural is covered.

Further, in 1977, NBC commissioned Francis Ford Coppola to combine the first two films for television. Coppola and editor Barry Malkin rearranged the story chronologically and restored nearly 75 minutes of deleted footage. The resulting seven-hour production aired over four nights as The Godfather Saga.

The point is that, across three theatrical movies, The Godfather Saga, other extended versions, and enough restored footage to qualify as a Corleone family surveillance archive, not one gangster ever orders anyone to be “86’d.”

These are not movies suffering from a shortage of murder. People are shot in restaurants, bedrooms, elevators, cars, revolving doors, and tollbooths. The Corleones order hits, settle family business, take care of problems, and make enemies disappear. A Hollywood producer wakes up in bed with the severed head of his prize racehorse; Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes; and, yeah, they put Moe Greene’s eye out.

But nobody gets “86’d.”

That does not prove that no criminal has ever used the expression to mean killing. Nearly any phrase meaning “get rid of him” can become murderous when spoken by someone holding a gun. Context does considerable work.

But “86” did not originate as Mafia code. It began as restaurant and soda-counter slang for an unavailable item. It later came to mean refusing someone service, throwing someone out, or getting rid of something. With the assassination narrative already supplied by the MAGA murder-mystery manufacturing machine, what Trump added was the explanation: he declared “86” a Mafia term meaning “kill” and cited “the movies” as his evidence. (Holy alliteration, Batman! That’s eight M’s. I impressed myself that time.)

Before going any further, I should explain that I will leave off the final two digits in question. I do not want a Justice Department investigation launched against me merely for typing all four of them together, since apparently that is somehow illegal.

That matters because Trump insists that pairing “86” with his presidential number must mean “kill the forty-seventh president.” It can just as naturally mean remove him, reject him, or get him out of office.

But wait, what about the person who actually arranged the seashells, the wayward beachcomber who masterminded this alleged seashell assassination plot?

Comey merely photographed someone else’s handiwork. If the arrangement constituted a genuine assassination threat, wouldn’t the person who composed it be the original threat-maker? Yet the government pursued Comey while apparently showing remarkably little curiosity about the enterprising shoreline decorator who supposedly issued the threat.

He remains at large, presumably armed with a plastic shovel, a sand bucket, a working knowledge of numerology, and an extensive list of numbers the DOJ has not yet outlawed.

If the culprit was actually the fry cook at Surf’s Up Grill & Bar, he may simply have been announcing a desired change to the lunch menu. If so, perhaps feloniously misinterpreting a harmless hash slinger should be added to Comey’s indictment.

The funniest part remains Trump’s appeal to Mafia movies as evidence. If “86 him” were the universally recognized mob command he claims, somebody might have said it during the Corleones’ half-century murder spree. Instead, the greatest Mafia saga in film history kills practically everyone except the expression Trump says all mobsters use.

Perhaps Trump has seen different Mafia movies.

Or perhaps he learned Mafia terminology at Bob’s Big Boy.

I’m just saying.