James Comey set off a firestorm of criticism from president Donald Trump's allies after posting a photo featuring the numbers "8647," but others called out their hypocrisy on social media.
The former FBI director shared a photo of an anti-Trump protest he spotted on a beach – "86" means to throw out or nix something, and "47" refers to Trump as the 47th president – and the U.S. Secret Service is investigating after Trump allies claimed the post was calling for his assassination.
But some of those same critics used similar language against former president Joe Biden or shared posts explicitly calling for violence against him
"There’s no hypocrisy in history like MAGA hypocrisy," said psychologist and author Dennis Lustig, sharing a photo of the right-wing influencer Jo's post featuring a decal of Biden gagged and bound in the back of a pickup, which was posted by Trump. "There’s no more worthless, despicable, and evil troglodytes than MAGAts. Our country will never recover from the damage they’ve inflicted. There’s no hell awful enough for every one of them."
"A story of staggering hypocrisy, in two tweets," posted Democratic strategist Matt McDermott, showing screenshots of two tweets by right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec accusing Comey of violent threats and an older one of his reading "86 46."
"Will @MarshaBlackburn ask for @amazon to be investigated for selling '8646' shirts and merch?" added the Tennessee Holler account. "Or is it only worthy of FBI investigations when it’s '8647'? We’ll hang up and listen."
"The MAGA hysteria over Comey's '8647' post is a test to see how gullible you are. Comey's post was a play on '8646,' a MAGA anti-Biden slogan," said the Capitol Hunters account. "If you watch MAGA rallies, you've seen '8646' - might even find Kash [Patel] wearing it on a podcast. Treat this op as the joke that it is."
"So MAGA freaks out when the former FBI director posts something that says '86 47,'" posted X user Harry Sisson. "But when Trump posts a video that includes an image of Biden being tied up and kidnapped, that’s acceptable? The hypocrisy is astounding."
"Apparently this has been a thing for quite a while, judging by Amazon," conceded conservative columnist Byron York, who found a way to remain mad about it several hours later in a subsequent post: "Comey, Trump and '86 47.' The resistance has used '86 45,’ now '86 47,’ for a while. Maybe it just means dump Trump. But there's no doubt it has a sinister, post-Butler feel to it since would-be assassins actually tried to kill him."