President Donald Trump is not buying former FBI Director James Comey‘s claim that he did not intend to call for violence against the president with his recent controversial social media post.
Comey posted on his Instagram account a formation of seashells which spelled out “86 47,” believed to mean “86,” or get rid of, the 47th president, Trump. The former FBI director, who was fired by Trump in 2017, later removed the post and said he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.”
When asked about the post, the president insisted that Comey knew what he meant, in an interview on Fox News’s Special Report on Friday.
“He knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said. “A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant. That meant assassination, and it says it loud and clear.”
Trump survived two assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign trail, including an incident where he was shot in the ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Comey was visited by the Secret Service on Friday over the post, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying there is an “ongoing investigation” into the Instagram post. When Trump was asked if Comey should face consequences for the controversial post, he deferred to law enforcement.
“If he had a clean history — he doesn’t, he’s a dirty cop… I could understand if there was a leniency. But I’m going to let them make that decision,” Trump said during the interview.
JAMES COMEY INTERVIEWED BY SECRET SERVICE OVER ‘8647′
Trump was also asked about the war in Ukraine during the interview. Despite not attending peace talks in Turkey, Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin does want the war to end.
“I think Putin is tired of this whole thing, and he’s not looking good, and he wants to look good,” Trump said. “Don’t forget, this was supposed to end in one week. And if he didn’t get stuck in the mud with his army tanks all over the place, he would have been in Kyiv in about five hours.”