On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the middle of the day, while he drove in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. Twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with killing Kennedy, but was himself shot and killed by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, while being transferred to another jail two days later. Since that time there has been hours and hours of footage, and pages and pages of writing dedicated to the events surrounding that day. Without involving ourselves in QAnon-style conspiracy theories, let us say that one* of the many reasons why conspiracy theories flourish around Kennedy’s assassination and Oswald’s culpability come out of the fact that Oswald’s short life was filled with U.S. military service, defection to the USSR, and a public commitment to the radical politics of the day. That, coupled with the government’s overt secrecy over its clandestine activities, left many questions unanswered and as such opened the door to far too much speculation.
Over the weekend, Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein used his Twitter account to ask Rep. Matt Gaetz to take time away from being investigated for human trafficking and super sketchy moral and felonious behavior to retweet a special Memorial Day reminder. Sending a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald’s enlistment photo, Klippenstein wrote, “@mattgaetz Congressman, my grandpa’s a big fan of yours and is a veteran, he would be thrilled if you could RT this photo of him for Memorial Day. Here he is as a young Private First Class.” Gaetz retweeted the photo, in part because he’s a dolt, and then these fun things got funner!
*This is just one reason.
Chairman of the American Conservative Union, and definitely not a scientist, Matt Schlapp jumped on board to retweet the same photo honoring Lee Harvey Oswald, writing “Wow @kenklippenstein it’s my honor to retweet the photo of a veteran on a day we remember his fallen friends. God bless your grandfather and [Flag emoji].”
This was particularly exquisite coming from the dirtbag that attacked Vice President Kamala Harris just a day earlier for not, in his and his wife’s estimation, properly saying happy Memorial Day, writing “I don’t think this was purposeful. I think they don’t even know what Memorial Day is. Shows how a woke staff is unattached from America. Also they don’t know history.” (The bold is me holding my middle finger at my screen.)
Convicted felon and fraud Dinesh D’Souza took time away from swimming in a pool of his own terrible ideas to retweet the image of Oswald as well.
And then right-wing bag of unintelligent dust Candace Owens decided to come charging into the fray and added a new level of make-’em-up facts that exposed, once again, how pointless Candace Owens is as a person. Hard-typing at Klippenstein (before blocking him) “You are making a mockery of a day that is meant to memorialize men that died so that you and other anti-American leftists can laugh at their sacrifices by photoshopping a murderer into their uniforms.” While Owens might be knowledgable about photoshop in regards to touching up her publicity shots, understanding how to use the “healing brush” to coverup blemishes does not make you a historian.
Matt Schlapp is 53. Matt Gaetz is 39. Owens is 32, and D’Souza is 60. Maybe you give Candace Owens a pass in not knowing that Oswald was a marine because she’s younger? Of course, she seems to be the only one of these American patriots who knew it was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Conspiracy theories abound over whether or not Oswald acted alone or was even the shooter. Of all the myriad conspiracy theories surrounding the death of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, the fact that Oswald was a former U.S. Marine has never been in doubt. It is well documented in every single thing ever written about Oswald. You can argue about whether you believe he was a crap Marine or a super secret CIA operative, but you cannot deny that he was at some point an enlisted soldier in our country’s armed forces. Unless, of course, you are a faux-patriot scumbag right-wing con artist. Then you can not know who Lee Harvey Oswald is, and when realizing this, pretend you were duped by fake news.