The Dictatorship
Republicans shrug off new charges against James Comey
For the second time in seven months, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on Tuesday, with the Department of Justice alleging he threatened President Donald Trump when he posted a photo on Instagram of seashells spelling out “86 47.”
To Democrats, the charges were “baseless,” “disgraceful” and “ridiculous.” To Republicans, it depends on who you ask.
Although there were some GOP lawmakers who expressed discomfort with the indictment on Wednesday, most Republicans tried to duck questions — with some even endorsing the charges.
Asked if the Comey indictment was warranted, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., didn’t miss a beat.
“Anybody that’s gonna threaten the president, any president of the United States, I think that’s where indictments are warranted,” said Donalds, a close Trump ally who’s running for governor in Florida with the president’s endorsement.
Shown a printout of Comey’s post, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said Comey “knows what he’s doing.”
“Comey knows better than that. That was intentional,” Norman said. “He’s not somebody that just got into the political game. So yeah, he should’ve been indicted.”
And Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said Comey’s Instagram post was “obviously a signal.”
“Eighty-six is — either you’re working in a restaurant, or you’re wanting to kill somebody,” Burchett said. “And 47 is obviously President Trump.”
Even Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, one of three Republicans representing a district that Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, didn’t find fault with the indictment.
“Director Comey can play cute and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t really mean assassination,’” Lawler said. “But when you’re saying ‘86 47,’ I think people are smart enough to understand what that actually means.”
Pressed on whether the conduct was criminal, Lawler — who said he’d defer to the DOJ on the judicial process and underscored the need to take threats of political violence seriously — responded with a tautology. “He was indicted, so seemingly,” he said.
The apparent GOP approval of the Comey indictment came one day after a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina formally charged the former FBI director with threatening the president and transmitting that alleged threat across state lines.
Comey voluntarily surrendered and made his initial appearance before a judge in Virginia on Wednesday, marking the second time the DOJ has indicted Comey. In September 2025, the former FBI director was charged with making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding on allegations that he lied during a Senate hearing in September 2020.
In November 2025, a judge dismissed the case, determining that then-interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed.
But unlike the previous indictment, Tuesday’s charges center entirely on a photo Comey posted on Instagram last year showing seashells that spell out “86 47,” with the caption “Cool shell formulation on my beach walk.”
It was the same slang that right-wing activist Jack Posobiec used in 2022, when he wrote on X “86 46” — an apparent reference to then-President Joe Biden. But unlike Trump’s Department of Justice, Biden’s DOJ didn’t prosecute the conservative influencer.
Asked about the differences between the two cases, Republicans tried to sidestep the question.
“That’s really a question for the attorney general, not me,” Donalds said.
Norman, meanwhile, pointed to the assassination attempts against Trump — the most recent being the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
“The difference is now we’ve had three attempts on the president’s life,” Norman said.
He also said Comey should know better. “He’s not somebody that just got into the political game,” Norman added.
Of course, not every Republican was so ready to endorse the charges.
“If it’s just down to one picture and a piece of sand, doesn’t sound appropriate to me,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who’s retiring at the end of this term, told MS NOW. “If the entire case is premised on ‘86 47’ written in conch shells on the sands of a North Carolina beach, that looks like it’s pretty weak.”
Tillis said he went “to the end of the internet” and concluded that, “I can’t find any example where it represents a threat.”
Ultimately, Tillis said, this was about “a picture in the sand.”
“Is that really the level of pettiness that we’re at now?” he asked.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also told MS NOW she doesn’t believe the social media post was a threat to Trump.
“It just seems to me that this is more executing on a political grievance,” she said.
Tillis and Murkowski also suggested there was little difference between Posobiec’s post and Comey’s case.
“There’s no difference,” Tillis said, with Murkowski saying the only difference was “who’s going after them.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., another retiring Republican, meanwhile, said that, while it was “foolish” for Comey to post the photo, the prosecution is an “overreach.”
“It’s more that weaponization of the law,” he told MS NOW. “And I’m not saying Trump is the only one that’s done it. It happened in the previous administration. But we got to stop the cycle. The cycle’s unhealthy.”
But while there were some Republicans defending and criticizing the charges, most Republicans who MS NOW asked about the indictment fell into a third category: professed ignorance and deference to the DOJ.
Asked about the indictment, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told MS NOW he didn’t know about “the details of that investigation.”
Presented with a printout of Comey’s post and asked if it was a threatening message, Burlison said he thought the post was “disgusting.
“I think he knew exactly what he was doing,” Burlison said of Comey. “I’ll just let the courts decide whether or no he had intent.”
And on the Posobiec post, it was the same message: “That’s not a topic that is one that I’ve been, like, on top of,” Burlison told MS NOW.
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., initially said he had not read the details of the indictment. After being shown a photo of Comey’s post, he told MS NOW he wasn’t a lawyer. “I’m a doc, I’m a Marine. I’ll let the lawyers take care of that,” he said.
Asked about the indictment, Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., said he also didn’t know the facts of the indictment. And when MS NOW showed him a photo of Comey’s post, he insisted there was more to the story.
“I haven’t had the benefit of knowing what was in the investigation or what the grand jury was presented, but I have to believe there’s more to this than just this picture,” he said.
It was a similar situation on the Senate side, where a handful of GOP lawmakers said they weren’t up to speed on the indictment, and therefore couldn’t weigh in on its merits.
“I’ve not followed that,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said. “Somebody has to explain it to me. I just don’t know what that’s about.”
Asked if he believed “86 47” was a death threat, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he had “never heard of it before.”
“He’s guilty of far more serious crimes than that,” Johnson said of Comey.
And pressed on the indictment and whether it was a death threat to the president, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo, told MS NOW she was sorry that she couldn’t really comment.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said.
Jack Fitzpatrick and JM Rieger contributed to this report.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
When it comes to members of Congress and medical transparency, it’s been an unfortunate year.
Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey was away from his duties for nearly four months for reasons he only recently disclosed; Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida missed roughly a month of work for a medical issue she disclosed after the fact; and Republican Rep. Neal Dunn of Florida, who’s struggled with health concerns he didn’t share, has been out for roughly a month and reportedly told GOP leaders that he won’t be voting at all unless party leaders really need him.
And then there’s Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The New York Times reported:
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the former majority leader, was hospitalized on June 14. Since then, his office has provided few updates about his condition.
The scant official statements have led to speculation around Washington and efforts to piece together information on what happened.
Questions about McConnell’s health are not altogether new. In recent years, the former GOP leader, who turned 84 in February, has been seen with unexplained bruises, has suffered unexplained falls and, in some especially unsettling moments, has frozen up and appeared unable to speak.
But as a related NBC News report noted, it’s now been 23 days since McConnell was admitted to the hospital, and if members of his team have information about why he was hospitalized or how he’s doing, they have kept those details from the public for reasons unknown.
The most recent statement from McConnell’s office, issued late last week, said the senator “appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital” and that he “continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”
That sounded vaguely encouraging, and people of goodwill can certainly hope he continues to recover from whatever it is that led to his hospitalization in the first place, but secrecy necessarily generates questions about why a prominent public official is not sharing basic details about his condition with his colleagues and constituents.
The Times’ report added, “Emergency responders the morning the Kentucky Republican was hospitalized reported performing CPR on an unconscious individual undergoing cardiac arrest at the senator’s Washington address, according to recordings of dispatcher calls that were widely reported by news outlets last week and obtained by The New York Times.”
The recordings did not specifically identify McConnell as the patient, and the senator’s office refused to say whether the calls were related to him.
As for the near future, in the event that McConnell’s Senate seat were to become vacant, state law in the Bluegrass State has changed a couple of times in recent years. In 2021, Kentucky’s Republican-led legislature approved a measure that would require Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear to fill a Senate vacancy by choosing one of three GOP options presented by state lawmakers.
In 2024, the Republican-led legislature changed state law again to remove the governor’s authority to fill a vacancy altogether: If Kentucky faces a Senate vacancy, the seat would remain empty until a statewide special election can be held.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
As the dam breaks on Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy, what happens next in Maine?
When Democrats in Maine were introduced to Graham Platner last summer, the oyster farmer and combat veteran quickly started picking up the kind of enthusiastic grassroots support other Senate candidates can only dream of. It wasn’t long before his campaign events were drawing the crowds usually reserved for leaders such as Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.
But a couple of months into his candidacy, as his record started to face greater scrutiny, controversies came to the fore. They were followed by more controversies and more still.
Most of his backers shrugged off the revelations, insisting that his near future was more important than his recent past. In early June, Platner held a private meeting with members of the Senate Democratic conference, who heard the candidate offer assurances that the worst was behind him. There was no reason to expect another round of damaging headlines, he said, just days before cruising to an impressive victory in Maine’s statewide primary on June 9.
As this week got underway, however, everything changed after Politico reported that a woman he previously dated had accused him of sexual assault. MS NOW reported:
Jenny Racicot, 41, of Maine said that Platner — whom she said she had casually dated on and off from 2019 to 2021 — entered her home one night late in 2021, uninvited and deeply intoxicated, and forced her to have sex despite her telling him to stop, according to the news outlet.
Racicot also detailed the allegations in a lengthy interview with BLN’s Jake Tapper, describing the accusations after they were first reported by Blue Light News.
For his part, Platner called the allegations “troubling, serious, and false” in a written statement, adding, “Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue.” The candidate nevertheless went on to post a video to social media in which he said, “[R]egardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful of the political reality it will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people I love, the movement I belong to and the goal of defeating [incumbent Republican Sen.] Susan Collins.”
Democratic officials cannot force him to drop out of the race. Platner won his primary race fair and square, and if he decides to keep running despite the scandals, there is nothing anyone can do about it.
What the party can do, however, is pressure Platner to exit and make clear that his support in Democratic politics has evaporated. That is precisely what happened on Monday afternoon, as the state and national party completely abandoned Platner and urged him to stand down. The pushback was not limited to those who were already skeptical of his candidacy: Several prominent Democrats who had endorsed Platner reversed course after seeing the Blue Light News article, withdrew their backing and called on him to quit.
We’ll learn soon enough whether the candidate reads the writing on the wall, but in the meantime, there are two overarching questions to keep in mind: (1) How would Platner be replaced, and (2) who would Maine Democrats replace him with if he bows out?
As to the former, there is a limited window of opportunity. Under Maine lawDemocratic officials would have the power to choose a replacement candidate, but only if he withdraws before the second Monday in July. At that point, Maine’s secretary of state would declare a vacancy and state party officials would choose a new nominee before a July 27 deadline.
Platner, in other words, has a week to make up his mind.
As to the latter question, quiet whispers about possible Platner alternatives have lingered for weeks, but that conversation grew much louder on Monday. The jockeying to replace Platner began soon after the embattled candidate said he was reflecting on the race, with much of the focus turning to Democrats who ran in Maine’s recent gubernatorial primary, only to come up short against former state House Speaker Hannah Pingree. That list includes Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former state Senate President Troy Jackson and Nirav Shah, former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
There’s been related scuttlebutt about Jordan Wood, who recently lost a competitive U.S. House primary race in the northern part of Maine; Dan Kleban, who briefly ran for the Senate before exiting last year; and former state House Speaker Sara Gideon, who lost to Collins six years ago but who still has a fair amount of money left in her campaign account.
Outgoing Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her own Senate campaign in late April, appears unlikely to gain serious consideration. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
President Donald Trump has a new favorite midterm strategy: painting the Democratic Party as a band of godless communists. It’s not going to pan out the way he wants.
During his speech Friday at Mount Rushmoreon the eve of Independence Day, Trump warned of a “resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.” The line was an unsubtle reference to the election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in 2025 and successful left-wing candidates in recent House primaries, including a Mamdani-backed trio that won contests in New York City.
Trump described the growth of the leftists in American politics as an apocalyptic development: “These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11,” Trump huffed. He added, “Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.”
The word “communist” is not the bogeyman it was during the 20th century or even the first decade of the 21st century.
During his remarks, Trump mentioned the term “communism” or “communist” 15 times. He invoked communism multiple times the following day in his July 4th speech. And the White House posted on X on Independence Day: “You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.” Right-wing influencers and Republicans have also begun to use the term to attack the left more often in recent weeks. This effort is concerted, desperate and likely doomed.
It’s standard practice for a political party to use the opposition’s most ideologically radical members to paint the entire party with the same brush. Sometimes it can be effective as a messaging strategy. But trying to portray Democrats specifically as communist seems like a dead end.
The word “communist” is not the bogeyman it was during the 20th century or even the first decade of the 21st century. The Cold War has long been over. Millennials and Gen Z Americans either were not alive or were not politically conscious at a time when communism was seen in popular culture as a serious national security and economic threat. To them, communism is a historical term, not a haunting specter. The Communist Party U.S.A. exists, but it is a tiny and politically irrelevant organization. Trump, perpetually stuck in the 1980slikely overestimates the power of “communist” as a slur.
Trump’s “communist” agenda is also inaccurate in a way that a good chunk of the public is likely to understand. He falsely claims that democratic socialists are no different from communists. The most prominent communist projects of the 20th century in the Soviet Union and China involved authoritarian political organizations and centrally planned economies, and were known for massive human rights abuses and dysfunction in distributing resources. By contrast, democratic socialists believe in democratic political organization and reject central planning. (This is a broad delineation; there are nuances that extend beyond the scope of this brief article.)
American democratic socialists today are not proposing extreme upheavals of society and economy, but modest social democratic reforms. These ideas, like publicly funded healthcare and childcare, already exist and are proven to be wildly successful in other affluent democracies. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — the most prominent living democratic socialist in America and consistently one of the most popular politicians in the country — isn’t associated with rationing food, but with taxing billionaires and demanding the popular idea of Medicare for All.
Finally, Trump’s panning of the democratic socialist insurgency as an assault on capitalism implicitly suggests that capitalism is worth defending wholesale. That puts him in the kind of position that doesn’t suit him: defending the status quo. Meanwhile, polls in recent years have indicated a declining approval of capitalism, and slowly rising approval of — or reduced negative feelings toward — socialism. Realistically speaking, not everyone who has a favorable opinion of socialism would not be able to define what it is. But they view it broadly as a program of social equality in a deeply unequal society, not as a portal to gulags.
Of course, it may very well be the case that most of the midterm electorate remains skeptical that the small democratic socialist bloc represents the future of the Democratic Party. The movement gets a lot of attention, but that’s not the same as power. What voters will know is that Trump is in power and has done nothing for the U.S. economy except make it more comfortable for the ultrarich and more expensive for everyone else. And no appeals to 20th century bogeymans can change that.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
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