Right-wingers of Wichita want protesters arrested for chanting “86 47” on Saturday.
In a related story, right-wingers of Wichita have abandoned any pretense of respect for the United States Constitution.
The calls for the arrest of protesters surfaced on Facebook and X over the holiday weekend when two local right-wing talk radio hosts — both Republican Party officers — posted a poorly made video of protesters who gather on Saturday afternoons at the corner of Broadway and Douglas.
It spread out nationwide with the help of the online network of MAGA propagandists.
John Whitmer, chairman of the Sedgwick County Republican Party and one of the two local talk radio hosts who posted the disorientingly weird video, disclosed on his Sunday night radio show that it was made by Hunter Larkin, the disgraced ex-mayor of Goddard, best known for shady dealings with developers, a DUI conviction and rampant cronyism that allowed him to essentially take over the city government in 2023.
It’s not the first time this kind of thing has come up with the downtown Wichita protests. A couple of weeks ago, these same folks had their knickers in a knot after one protester showed up with a Styrofoam wig head with a Donald Trump mask and fake blood on it.
Saturday’s protest chant of “86 47” escalated to calls for arresting the protesters en masse for ostensibly threatening the assassination of the president.
They did nothing of the sort.
The term “86” is a common one in the food and beverage service industry. Its primary meaning is to take something off the menu.
I was introduced to this term in 1978, when I worked in an Italian restaurant as a high school senior, as in “86 the Hawaiian pizza tonight, the pineapple went bad.”
The term is also used — and this is the sense in which it’s directed at Trump — as a code for ejecting an obnoxious customer who’s causing trouble.
Those have been the commonly used, commonly accepted meanings of the term “86” for more than a century/ But a couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration decided that “86” is a death threat, when former FBI director James Comey posted a picture on Instagram of some seashells on a beach arranged to spell “86 47” (Trump is both the 45th and 47th president).
“Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem thundered on X. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”
The appropriate response would be laughter at an administration that freaks out whenever someone says they ought to be kicked out of office because they’re really bad at their jobs.
Also, it’s worth noting that you never heard a peep out of these people when their side was selling “86 46” T-shirts, stickers, hats and garden flags on Amazon. It’s a death threat when directed at Trump, but just good fun when targeting Joe Biden.
I can only surmise that it’s coming as a huge surprise to millions of bouncers, bartenders and wait staff across the country, that when the boss told them to 86 a customer from the establishment, they weren’t just supposed to show them to the door, they were actually supposed to take them out back and kill them.
That’s how ridiculous this is.
But the motto of Wichita’s far-right Republican leaders and local officials is “Never let a good hysteria go to waste.”
