violence

There’s a wonderfully simple emotional appeal embedded in the opening of “I Don’t Understand You,” a comedy from co-writer-directors Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig. Well-meaning, well-off gay couple Dom and Cole (Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells, respectively) are eager to adopt a baby. In watching them record an appeal video — selling themselves as fit parents to an unknown mother — you want the best for them. It’s a heartrending, nervous-laughter scene: Are they sincere without being desperate? Charming yet not edgy? In between the stops and restarts, they both wittily let off steam about the absurdity of the process.

How hard does it have to be for willing adults in a loving relationship to start a family? That’s where “I Don’t Understand You” devotes its more darkly humorous energies when it sends Dom and Cole to sunny, pastoral Italy for an anniversary trip, dropping them into a series of lethally unfortunate situations that probably only Patricia Highsmith would consider a proper vacation.

Soon after landing in Rome, they’re buoyed by news that a receptive pregnant mother named Candace (Amanda Seyfried via video chat) is touched by their story, their vibe being everything she wants for her baby. It’s a cautious optimism, though, competing with the anxiety Dom and Cole generally feel as gay men on the alert for everyday microaggressions, also as tourists who don’t know the language and urbanites not exactly comfortable navigating another country’s backwaters at night.

That last concern is what kicks off their nightmare, when the couple’s rental car gets stuck on a private road that leads to a remote farmhouse where they have a reservation for an anniversary dinner. A mild panic bubbles up. The gruff, irritable and armed local who shows up only fuels their notion that death is surely around the corner. And it is, just not the way they or we may have imagined when they eventually reach the rustic home of retired restaurateur Francesca (a nonna-authentic Eleonora Romandini) and find a voluble soul who can’t wait to serve her only guests a celebratory candlelit meal.

Subtitles helpfully let us know what the skittish, suspicious Dom and Cole never quite understand about their friendly host. When Francesca’s hulking, inquisitive son Massimo (Morgan Spector) appears, suggestively brandishing a knife, a blunt fiasco of an evening suddenly tips over into a bloody farce of fear-driven misjudgment. Despite the game commitment of everyone on-screen (starting with Kroll and Rannells’ believable portrayal of loving, vulnerable gay marrieds), “I Don’t Understand You” is only sporadically funny.

The writer-directors are themselves a real-life couple who adopted a child, so ostensibly we’re getting an exaggeratedly autobiographical peek into what self-preservation on the cusp of dadhood looks like at its off-the-charts hairiest. And it’s encouraging that the filmmakers opted to turn their experience and its attendant emotions into a silly horror comedy instead of one more earnest social-issue drama. (Amanda Knox is a listed co-producer too, and when the Italian arm of justice gets involved, you’ll understand why.)

Just as its opening triggers hope for its wannabe family men, you want “I Don’t Understand You” to really nail its downward spiral, and yet it’s something of a misfire, albeit a likable one. The tone swerve into body-count humor and the nuts and bolts of violence eventually prove too much for Crano and Craig to effectively mold into a comedy of perception and privilege.

On May 21, as they left the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were fatally shot, and because they were employees of the Israeli Embassy and the suspect was associated with pro-Palestinian politics, the story was reported in the familiar mode of Middle East politics.

The questions that reporters and pundits have been asking are: “Was this antisemitic?” “Was this killing a direct result of Israel’s starving of Palestinians in Gaza?” “Was this another act of pro-Palestinian terrorism?” “Is this the direct result of ‘globalizing the intifada’?” While these are valid questions, they miss a central part of the story.

Only in the eighth paragraph of the New York Times report are we told that the night before the shooting, according to officials, the suspect “had checked a gun with his baggage when he flew from Chicago to the Washington area for a work conference” and, further, that officials said “The gun used in the killings had been purchased legally in Illinois.” (The Los Angeles Times article does not mention these facts.) This tragic shooting, however, is not unique.

In November 2023, a Burlington, Vt., man was arrested and charged with shooting three Palestinian college students without saying a word to them. (He has pleaded not guilty.)

In October 2018, a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and shot and killed 11 Jews at prayer.

In 2015, three Muslim students were shot and killed by their neighbor in Chapel Hill, N.C.

This brief and very incomplete list of the literally hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed by guns in the U.S. in the last decade does not include the racist mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.; the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.; or the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, at a music festival in Las Vegas in 2017. This macabre list also leaves out the thousands of people who have been shot and killed by law enforcement.

The elephant in the room — so fundamentally accepted that it largely goes unmentioned — is the deeply ingrained culture of violence in the United States. Gun ownership, police violence and abuse, and mass shootings are symptoms of that culture. However, the militaristic approach to international conflict (from Vietnam to Ukraine) and the disdain for nonviolent solutions are also grounded in this culture, as are the manosphere and the cruelty of predatory capitalism. Now we have a presidential administration that embodies this culture.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, personifies this ethos of cruelty and violence when she is photographed in front of a cage full of humans in a Salvadoran jail known for torturous treatment of inmates or writing casually about killing her dog. Noem is a key player in the theater of cruelty, but she is not the only one, and the unparalleled star is of course President Trump.

Trump’s policy agenda is based on vengeance. He revels in the theatricality of violence of the world of mixed martial arts, and he signs executive orders that aim to destroy individuals, law firms and universities that have not bent the knee, and the economics of his “Big Beautiful” budget moves money from those in need to those who need for naught.

Now, the president wants a military parade on his birthday that will include tanks, helicopters and soldiers. Although Trump himself evaded the draft, and he reportedly called American soldiers who were killed in war suckers and losers, he likes the strongman aesthetic of an army that is at his beck and call. He exulted in the fact that “we train our boys to be killing machines.”

Although some want to draw a dubious line from pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations to the killings of Lischinsky and Milgrim, the direct line that should be drawn is the one that everyone seems to have agreed to ignore: a culture of violence coupled with the widespread availability and ownership of guns inevitably leads to more death.

The only way we get out of this cycle of violence is by addressing the elephant in the room.

Aryeh Cohen is a rabbi and a professor at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. @irmiklat.bsky.social

The morning after a man hurled Molotov cocktails at a crowd of Jewish Americans in Boulder, Colo., Rabbi Noah Farkas celebrated the first day of Shavuot in the usual way: He read the Torah about the giving of the Ten Commandments to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.

But Farkas, the president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said what was supposed to be a holiday celebrating the establishment of law and order was marred by the weekend violence.

“The community is terrified,” Farkas said outside Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge.

“It’s remarkable to me that those who want to assault us are coming up with ever new and novel ways to do harm to us and to try to kill us.”

Twelve people between the ages of 52 and 88 were burned in the Colorado attack. A man — identified by law enforcement as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, an Egyptian citizen who had overstayed his tourist visa — used a “makeshift flamethrower” to attack demonstrators marching peacefully in a weekly event supporting Israeli hostages in Gaza.

According to an FBI affidavit, the attacker yelled “Free Palestine!” — the same cry uttered by the suspect in a May 21 incident in which two Israeli Embassy aides were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.

The back-to-back attacks have unnerved many Jewish Americans — particularly as they come just a month after a man set fire to the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish. A suspect later said the fire was a response to Shapiro’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza.

“We are in a completely new era for antisemitic violence in the United States,” said Brian Levin, the founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino. “We are now at a point of extraordinary national security concern with respect to protecting Jewish communities across the U.S. and worldwide.”

Anti-Jewish hate crimes, Levin said, hit record levels nationally in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, the last year that the FBI has available data, anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 63% to a record 1,832 incidents, Levin said. Last year, religious hate crimes were up significantly in major U.S. cities, Levin said, with anti-Muslim hate crimes rising 18%, and anti-Jewish ones rising for the fourth consecutive year, up 12% to a new record.

“Over the last decade, we’re seeing more mass casualties attacks and they’re becoming more frequent and more fatal,” Levin said. “It used to be that anti-Jewish hate crimes, unlike a lot of other hate crimes, were much more tied to property damage and intimidation. Now were seeing just a slew of high intensity types of attacks.”

The attacks in the U.S. come as United Nations officials and aid groups warn that the situation in Gaza has become increasingly dire, with Palestinians in Gaza on the brink of famine as Israel continues its 19-month military offensive against Hamas militants.

Two weeks ago, Israel agreed to pause a nearly three-month blockade and allow a “basic quantity” of food into Gaza to avert a “hunger crisis” and prevent mass starvation.

On Sunday, Gaza health officials and witnesses said more than 30 people were reported killed and 170 wounded as Palestinians flocked to an aid distribution center in the southern Gaza, hoping to obtain food. The circumstances were disputed. Witnesses said Israeli forces fired on crowds about 1,000 yards from an aid site run by a U.S.-backed foundation, but Israel’s military denied its forces fired at civilians.

Levin attributed the rise in violence in the U.S. to a number of factors, including the Israel-Hamas war and the “increasingly unregulated freewheeling online environment.” Horrifying imagery coming out of the Middle East, Levin said, was amplified on social media by those who ascribed responsibility to anyone who believes Israel has a right to exist, or is Jewish, or wanted hostages to be released.

“What happens is angry and unstable people not only find a home for their aggression, but a honed amplification and direction to it that is polished by this cesspool of conspiracism and antisemitism,” Levin said.

In Los Angeles’ Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the mood was subdued Monday as a smattering of Orthodox families made their way to services to observe Shavuot. Many kosher establishments were closed and armed guards flanked entrances to larger Jewish centers and temples.

On Pico Boulevard, a 25-year-old Orthodox man carried a prayer shawl close to his chest as he headed to a service at a temple just before noon. He had slept just a few hours after staying up all night reading the Torah.

Despite the news of the attack in Colorado, the man — who identified himself as Laser — carried an easy smile.

“It’s a joyous holiday,” he said.

The Colorado attack was horrifying, he said, but it was not anything new and paled in comparison with the feeling that descended on the Jewish community in Los Angeles and across the world after Oct. 7.

“It’s never good to see or read about those types of things,” he said. “We just pray for the ultimate redemption, for peace here, peace abroad, peace around the world.”

At Tiferet Teman Synagogue, a man standing at the door repeatedly apologized to a Times reporter, saying that he would not discuss the event that happened in Colorado.

“I’m not going to invite politics into the community,” he said. “God bless you all.”

Others observing the holiday declined to have their photo taken and many of the businesses were closed. A quiet buzz pervaded Pico Boulevard as Orthodox members of the community made their way to services, many of them trying their best to avoid eye contact.

A Persian Jewish man from Iran said he has always been hesitant about religious violence. The man, who declined to give his name, was on his way to service.

“You always have to keep your eyes open,” he said. “No matter where you are in the world.”

Noa Tishby, an Israeli-born author who lives in L.A. and is Israel’s former special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization, said that many Jewish people were afraid to congregate.

“The Jewish community feels under siege,” she said. “People are removing their mezuzahs from their doorsteps. They’re removing Jewish insignia from themselves, removing their Star of David or hiding it. They’re afraid to go to Jewish events.”

Tishby said that the Colorado attacker appeared to be motivated by antisemitism: the views and beliefs of the victims didn’t matter.

“What if that particular woman that man tried to burn alive yesterday, what if she was a Bibi hater, would that appease him?” Tishby asked, using a nickname for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The answer is no. He doesn’t know what her political opinions are in America or in Israel. He just burned her because she was Jewish.”

Antisemitism, Tishby argued, was a shape-shifting conspiracy theory that had evolved into anti-Zionism.

“What happened is that the word Zionist is now a code name for Jew,” she said. “We have been warning for decades that anti-Zionism is the new face of antisemitism…. They’re taking all the hate, everything that’s wrong in the world right now, and they’re pinning it on the Jewish state.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was quick to denounce the attack Sunday as “an atrocious affront to the very fabric of our society and our beliefs here in Los Angeles.” In a statement, she said she would call an emergency meeting at City Hall addressing safety and security across the city immediately after Shavuot.

“LAPD is conducting extra patrols at houses of worship and community centers throughout LA. Anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in this city,” she said.

After speaking to Bass on Sunday, Farkas said that he planned to meet in person with the mayor on Wednesday after the Shavuot holiday to have a “real, frank conversation” about antisemitism.

“There is a cycle that we go through where our hearts are shattered and yet we have to keep enduring,” Farkas said. “And it makes us call into question the commitment of our wider community and our government to the safety of the Jewish community.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cassie is celebrating a new personal milestone: her baby boy with husband Alex Fine has arrived.

The “Me & U” singer on Tuesday gave birth to her third child in a New York hospital, sources confirmed to TMZ and People. She and “MobLand” actor Fine welcomed their newest family member after the former was rushed to the hospital Tuesday and admitted into the labor and delivery unit, according to TMZ.

A representative for Cassie, 38, did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for confirmation and additional information.

The singer (born Casandra Ventura) married Fine, 32, in October 2019 months after meeting him earlier that year at a gym where he worked as a wellness consultant. They also share daughters Frankie, 5, and Sunny, 3.

Cassie announced her pregnancy in February via Instagram, sharing photos from an intimate family photo shoot. She captioned the post — which prominently featured her baby bump and her loved ones surrounding her — with a few emojis, including a blue heart. Fine, also known for the series “American Primeval” and “1883,” said in his own Instagram post at the time that his growing family was the “best gift I could ask for.”

The “Long Way 2 Go” musician enters her newest chapter of motherhood less than two weeks after she testified against ex-boyfriend and disgraced music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs in his federal sex trafficking trial in New York. During her four days of testimony, Cassie shared disturbing allegations about her relationship with the Bad Boy Records boss — including his alleged fits of violence, threats of blackmail and his notorious sexual marathons called “freak-offs.” She sued Combs in the fall of 2023, helping set the stage for additional lawsuits from other accusers, federal raids on Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami and more legal fallout.

“I hope my testimony has given strength and a voice to other survivors and can help others who have suffered to speak up and also heal from abuse and fear,” Cassie said in a statement shared by her attorney Douglas Wigdor. “For me, the more I heal, the more I can remember. And the more I can remember, the more I will never forget.”

Fine, in a statement through Wigdor, also shut down narratives that he saved his wife from Combs. “To say that is an insult to the years of painful work my wife has done to save herself,” he said. “Cassie saved Cassie.”

He added: “She alone broke free from abuse, coercion, violence and threats.”

Fine concluded, noting “this horrific chapter is forever put behind us” and asked for privacy ahead of the arrival of his son with Cassie.

Times staff write Richard Winton and former Times staff writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report.

Claude fears he may soon die – either from starvation or violence – as he waits at a food distribution tent in a refugee camp in Burundi.

He is among thousands of Congolese refugees trapped between a brutal conflict across the border and severe reductions in international food assistance.

A former bouncer from Uvira, a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Claude fled after violence erupted in the east, sparked by the rapid advance of the Rwanda-backed M23 group.

Armed groups “were shooting, killing each other, … raping women,” recalled the 25-year-old, who escaped across the border into Burundi in February.

In the overcrowded Musenyi camp, Claude now faces a different struggle as food rations dwindle.

Hunger has fuelled new tensions within the camp, prompting Claude to join volunteers who patrol the area to prevent theft of what supplies remain.

“When I arrived here, I was given 3.5kg [7.7lb] of rice per month. Now it’s a kilo [2.2lb]. The 3kg [6.6lb] of peas have dropped to 1.8kg [4lb]. What I get in tomato sauce lasts one day. Then it’s over,” said Claude, whose name has been changed for security reasons, as have the names of other refugees interviewed.

Some of the most desperate resort to slashing neighbours’ tents in search of food, he added, while gangs “spread terror”.

“The reduction of assistance will lead to many crimes,” he warned.

Oscar Niyibizi, the camp’s deputy administrator, described the cut in food rations as a “major challenge” that could “cause security disruption”.

He urges refugees to cultivate land nearby but said external support remains desperately needed.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump slashed its aid budget by 80 percent, and other Western nations have also reduced donations. As a result, many NGOs and United Nations agencies have been forced to close or significantly scale back their programmes.

These cutbacks have come at a “very bad time” as fighting escalates in the DRC, according to Geoffrey Kirenga, head of mission for Save the Children in Burundi.

Burundi, one of the world’s poorest countries, has received more than 71,000 Congolese refugees since January while still hosting thousands from previous conflicts.

Established last year to accommodate 10,000 people, the Musenyi camp’s population is now nearly twice that number.

In addition to food shortages, the reduction in aid has led NGOs to discontinue support services for survivors of sexual violence, who are numerous in the camp, Kirenga said.

His gravest concern is that “deaths from hunger” may become inevitable.

The World Food Programme has halved rations since March and warned that without renewed US funding, all assistance could end by November.

According to the UN, hundreds of Congolese refugees are compelled to risk returning across the border in search of food.

Actions, we know, have consequences. And an apparent Marxist’s cold-blooded murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington on Wednesday night was the natural and inevitable consequence of a conscientious, years-long campaign to dehumanize Jews and otherize all supporters of the world’s only Jewish state.

Seriously, what did you think was going to happen?

Some of President Trump’s more colorful all-caps and exclamation-mark-filled social media posts evince an impending jackboot, we’re sometimes told. (Hold aside, for now, columnist Salena Zito’s apt 2016 quip about taking Trump seriously but not literally.) Words either have meaning or they don’t. And many left-wing Americans have, for a long time now, argued that they have tremendous meaning. How often, as the concept of the “microaggression” and its campus “safe space” corollary took off last decade, were we told that “words are violence”? (I’ll answer: A lot!)

So are we really not supposed to take seriously the clear calls for Jewish genocide that have erupted on American campuses and throughout American streets since the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023? Are we really supposed to believe that chants such as “globalize the intifada,” “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” are vague and open to competing interpretations?

That doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

When pro-Israel Jewish American Paul Kessler died after being hit on the head during a clash of protesters in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 5, 2023, that is what “intifada revolution” looks like in practice. When Israeli woman Tzeela Gez was murdered by a jihadist while en route to the hospital to deliver her baby earlier this month, that was what “from the river to the sea” looks like in practice. And when two young Israeli Embassy staffers were executed while leaving an event this week at Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum, that is what “globalize the intifada” looks like in practice.

Really, what did you think was going to happen?

Indeed, it is the easily foreseeable nature of Wednesday night’s slayings that is perhaps the most tragic part of it all. The suspect in the deaths of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim left behind a handy manifesto laying out a clear political motivation. This was not a random drive-by shooting. Hardly. This was a deliberate act — what appears to be an act of domestic terrorism. And the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, has a long history of involvement in far-left activist causes. If the killer intended to target Jews, then the fact that both victims were apparently Christian only underscores the “globalize” part of “globalize the intifada.”

Zito had it right back in 2016: Trump’s social media posts should be taken seriously, not literally. But when it comes to the murderous, genocidal clamoring for Jewish and Israeli blood that has become increasingly ubiquitous ever since the Jews themselves suffered their single bloodiest day since the Third Reich, such anti-Israel and antisemitic words must be taken both seriously and literally.

A previous generation of lawmakers once urged Americans to fight the terrorists “over there” so that they can’t harm us “here.” How quaint! The discomfiting reality in the year 2025 is this: The radicals, both homegrown and foreign-born alike, are already here. There are monsters in our midst.

And those monsters are not limited to jihadists. Domestic terrorists these days come from all backgrounds. The deaths of two Israeli diplomats are yet another reminder (not that we needed it): Politically motivated violence in the contemporary United States is not an equivalent problem on both the left and the right.

In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins attempted to shoot up the socially conservative Family Research Council because he heard it was “anti-gay.” In 2017, James Hodgkinson shot up the Republican congressional baseball team a few weeks after posting on Facebook that Trump is a “traitor” and threat to “our democracy.” In 2022, Nicholas Roske flew cross-country to try to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and thus prevent Roe vs. Wade from being overturned. Earlier this year, anti-Elon Musk activists burned and looted Teslas — and assaulted Tesla drivers — because of Musk’s Trump administration work with his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. And who can forget Luigi Mangione, who is charged in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson?

Both “sides” are not culpable here. They just aren’t. Israel supporters in America aren’t out there gunning down people waving the PLO flag. Nor are capitalists out there gunning down socialists.

There is a real darkness out there in certain — increasingly widespread — pockets of the American activist left. Sure, parts of the right are also lost at the moment — but this is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Regardless, the violence must end. And we must stop treating open calls for murder or genocide as morally acceptable “speech.” Let’s pull ourselves back from the brink before more blood is shed.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

Despite the recent peace accord signed by the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) and two rebel groups, the warring parties have continued attacking each other, with unarmed civilians at the receiving end.

The latest clashes occurred on May 15, 2025, between the CAR soldiers and dozens of rebels around the Mambere prefecture of the country. Events leading to the clashes remain unknown, but local media reports reveal that a soldier was injured during the fighting.

The incident came 24 hours after another attack in the town of Ouadda, situated 204 kilometres from Bria in the Haute-Kotto prefecture. There, the armed group, Rassemblement de la Nation Centrafricaine (PRNC), carried out an offensive which resulted in the death of five soldiers and two civilians.

The CAR authorities have not made any declaration concerning the incidents, and the exact circumstances of the clashes and the details of the armed groups involved remain unclear.

The country has been embroiled in a brutal civil war since 2013, when the Séléka, a predominantly Muslim rebel coalition, seized power and ousted President François Bozizé. This marked the beginning of a devastating conflict that has ravaged the country, causing widespread displacement, hunger, and human rights abuses.

Historical grievances played a significant role in the conflict’s escalation. The Séléka rebels accused the government of failing to abide by previous peace agreements, which led to their takeover. Religious and ethnic tensions between the mostly Muslim Séléka rebels and the predominantly Christian Anti-balaka militias have fueled the conflict. 

Over 737,000 Central Africans are registered as refugees, and 632,000 are internally displaced. Half of the population lacks access to sufficient food, and the country ranks worst on the Global Hunger Index. The healthcare system is barely functioning, with a shortage of skilled health workers and medical supplies. The ongoing conflict has had a profound impact on the country’s development and its people. The situation remains complex, with multiple factors contributing to the crisis. 

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that federal law enforcement is investigating a social media post made by former FBI Director James Comey that she and other Republicans suggest is a call for violence against President Trump.

In an Instagram post, Comey wrote “cool shell formation on my beach walk” under a picture of seashells that appeared to form the shapes for “86 47.”

Numerous Trump administration officials, including Noem, said Comey was advocating for the assassination of Trump, the 47th president. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately,” Noem wrote.

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by the Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

The post has since been deleted. Comey subsequently wrote, “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

“It never occurred to me,” Comey added, “but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Comey’s original post sparked outrage among conservatives on social media, with Donald Trump Jr. accusing Comey of calling for his father’s killing.

Current FBI Director Kash Patel said he was aware of the post and was conferring with the Secret Service and its director.

James Blair, White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs, noted that the post came at a delicate time given that Trump is traveling in the Middle East.

“This is a Clarion Call from Jim Comey to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East,” Blair wrote on X.

Comey, who was FBI director from 2013-17, was fired by Trump during the president’s first term amid the bureau’s probe into allegations of ties between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Comey wrote about his career in the bestselling memoir “A Higher Loyalty.”

He is now a crime fiction writer and is promoting his latest book, “FDR Drive,” which is being released Tuesday.