In my misspent youth, I once worked a summer job as a waiter at Shoney’s. It is an experience that I do not recommend. But it did teach me two valuable things: 1) How not to drown in a puddle of my own embarrassment when marching around the dining room with my fellow servers and singing a birthday song that began, “Happy, happy birthday, we’re so glad you came”; and 2) That when the surly line cooks ran out of chicken fried steak, they would shout “86 the chicken fried steak!” through the pass.
To “86” something, in restaurant slang, is to say that it is out, finished, gone, through, not on the menu anymore. This is the only sense in which I have heard the term used in my entire life.
But according to Wikipedia, which naturally has an entry about the term, two further meanings do exist. “86” can also be applied to people a restaurant refuses to serve, and some slang dictionaries say it can refer to murder.
Which brings us to former FBI director James Comey, Instagram, and a picture of seashells.
86 the shells!
In 2025, Comey posted to Instagram an image of shells arranged in the shape of two numbers: “86 47.”
James Comey’s seashell post.
Trump, our 47th President, has long harbored a grudge against Comey, going back to Comey’s investigation of Trump’s possible Russian ties. Trump famously fired Comey in 2017—then, for good measure, fired his prosecutor daughter in 2025.
Trump has been clear for years about his desire to use the power of the federal government to make life more difficult for Comey, and federal officials in his second term have been willing to comply.
Fortunately, they have also been pretty stupid. Through a series of staggeringly incompetent actions, the administration already had its first Comey indictment tossed out in Virginia—a loss so epic that it got Trump’s interim US attorney for Virginia booted, too.
