23-skidoo (12. 467)

Unclear who arranged the shells, former FBI director under Donald Trump during his first term, James Comey (previously here and here)—who prior to the election made hay over Hilary Clinton’s private server overshadowing Trump’s own string of controversies and unceremoniously dismissed for conducting an independent investigation into Russian interference in the campaign and since his firing a vocal critic—was interviewed by the US Secret Service for an hour after sharing and then deleting an image encountered on a stroll along a beach with the widely shared though perhaps selectively interpreted political message, 8647. Trump accused Comey of feigning ignorance, Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem is continuing the investigation for advocating the assassination of the president with Director of National Intelligence calling for the former FBI chief to be jailed for “issuing a hit” while the president was on official travel in the Middle East and Junior—his father having survived two assassination attempts during the race accused Comey of “calling for my dad to be murdered.” The term 86, which generally does not denote violence but rather booting out an undesirable patron, seems to have entered the political lexicon when Trump’s then  press-secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Mexican restaurant in Virginia in 2018, cleaving close to the original meaning of the rhyming slang for nix. Coined in the 1920s by the hospitality industry, it was shorthand among service personnel to indicate an item from the menu that was no longer available and by extension a guest that was no longer welcome in the establishment, the etymology is unclear: whether from the jargon and numerical codes of soda jerks, a signal during Prohibition to exit out the back door ahead of a police raid out to Eighty-Sixth Street or from an unknown source. The term was cited occasionally for partisan gesturing since, a similar formulation used previously by Republicans to call for Biden’s removal but without this level of controversy or retributive repercussions.