Fun Fact For The Day – Shell Shocked

Faint By Numbers

May 2, 2026

Donald Jeffrey Epstein Trump and his cadre of unfortunate attorneys pretending to comprise what once was the Department of Justice couldn’t manage to indict James Comey* for doing his job investigating Trump’s very real and successful ties to Russia who provided material support to the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.

The new game in town is a super lame, evidence-free attempt to indict Comey for threatening violence against Trump because he posted the following picture he took while walking along the beach

Team Trump’s premise is that “86” refers to a mob hit. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary

 

According to the award-wishing research team at Paying Attention™, all of this misses the actual meaning of these otherwise innocuous digits.

Think back to the mid-1960s. The great Mel Brooks created a hit television series spoofing spy shows; it was called Get Smart. The title character Maxwell Smart worked for a spy agency called CONTROL. Like his more serious fictional counterpart from the UK – James Bond, agent 007 – Maxwell Smart also had a number, as did all CONTROL agents with the exception of the Chief and the agent Larabee. Smart was Agent 86. 

Agent 86 on his shoe phone

As it turns out a character featured in the 1966 Season 2 episode was Agent 47. In the episode, Agent 47 dies, forcing Maxwell Smart to take over labor negotiations for the Guild of Surviving CONTROL Agents. So, Agent 47 was 86’d.

Case closed. 

You’re welcome.

Pulitzer please.

Or maybe the Nobel Peace Prize.

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*You may recall that James Comey was instrumental in catapulting Trump into the White House in 2016 by casting more unwarranted suspicion on Hillary Clinton’s emails eleven days before the election.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Fun Fact For The Day.