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Electing Trump Probably Wouldn’t Get Us Any Closer to the Truth About the JFK Assassination

Polaroid photograph of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, taken an estimated one-sixth of a second after the fatal head shot. Photo by Mary Ann Moorman. Public domain.
Polaroid photograph of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, taken an estimated one-sixth of a second after the fatal head shot. Photo by Mary Ann Moorman. Public domain.

When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. dropped out of the US presidential race and endorsed the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, on August 23, his first reward was a promise: If elected, Axios reports, Trump say he will “establish an independent presidential commission on assassination attempts” and “task the commission with releasing all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.”

I’m skeptical, and I’m not alone.

The Future of Freedom Foundation’s Jacob G. Hornberger — author of several informative books on the assassination — notes that Trump made the same promise in 2016, then reneged on that promise.

Hornberger also asserts — with good reason, in my opinion — that even if “smoking gun” documentation contradicting the “Lee Harvey Oswald as lone assassin” narrative ever existed, “there is no chance whatsoever that the CIA would have turned over such a record to the Assassination Records Review Board or the National Archives instead of simply destroying it. ”

A third argument against the likelihood that we’ll get more information:

Weasel-word “tasking” a government agency, commission, or board with this or that deliverable is the go-to method by which a politician accomplishes nothing while claiming he kept a promise.

Trump himself is a great example: One of his promises in 2016 was to cut regulation by requiring federal agencies to eliminate two regulations for each new one they created.

But when Trump issued his vaunted executive order to that effect, it wasn’t really to that effect. It merely required the agencies to “identify” two regulations “for” repeal, not actually repeal them.

Results?

As of three days before Trump’s inauguration, according to QuantGov’s Regulation Tracker, the Federal Register included 1,079,651 regulations. The number of federal regulations then increased, not dropping below the original number again for nearly two years, then began increasing again, totaling 1,089,742 on the day Trump left office.

So:

Trump’s already proven he can’t be trusted to keep promises relating to records concerning the assassination of JFK.

Even if Trump claimed he was “keeping” that promise, his way of “keeping” it would most likely involve fobbing off responsibility on a commission with enough wiggle room in its mandate to avoid real disclosure.

And even if the commission released every last relevant document in the government’s possession, it’s a safe bet that any documents contradicting the “lone gunman” narrative in any substantive or provable way were shredded, then burned, then buried at sea decades ago.

The official story, as promulgated by the Warren Commission in 1964, hasn’t aged well. As of last year, per Gallup, 65% of Americans believe the assassination was carried out by conspirators, not by Oswald alone.

They’re probably right — but unfortunately, we’ll probably never know exactly what happened in Dallas that day.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

RFK Jr. Was Never Really The Alternative He Pretended To Be

Photo by Gage Skidmore. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Photo by Gage Skidmore. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

On April 19, 2023, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. launched his long-shot presidential bid as a Democrat.

On October 9, 2023, he declared himself an “independent” and began courting (and in some states, creating) “third parties” for their nominations. He received 19 votes for the Libertarian Party’s nomination at its 2024 national convention over Labor Day weekend.

Three months later, on August 23, he “suspended” his campaign and called for a “unity party” with the Republican candidate, former president Donald Trump.

I didn’t see  that last part coming, but color me un-surprised that his campaign struggled, grasped at various life preservers,  and finally  drowned.

All Kennedy ever really had going for him was his family’s name. He knew that was his biggest asset — he even ran a Super Bowl commercial reprising his uncle’s 1960 television advertisements — but nostalgia can only take one so far, especially when the family in question comes out hard against you.

Independent and third party presidential campaigns generally enjoy success (relatively speaking) in proportion to one or two factors.

The first, the one Kennedy leaned on, is identity.

Theodore Roosevelt didn’t knock down 27.4% of the vote in 1912 because of his Progressive, AKA Bull Moose, party’s platform. He did so well because everyone knew Theodore Roosevelt was and many  remembered his previous terms fondly.

It was Ross Perot’s personal legend — up-by-his-bootstraps billionaire businessman who flew Christmas gifts into Hanoi for America POWs and orchestrated the rescue of his company’s employees from post-revolution Iran — more so than his hammering on the national debt and opposition to NAFTA — that drove his vote totals of 18.91% in 1992 and 8.4% in 1996.

The Kennedy name was a big deal … once upon a time. But the US median age is 38.9 years. Most people alive today weren’t alive when Ted Kennedy unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination in 1980, let alone when RFK Jr.’s father and uncle were assassinated in, respectively, 1968 and 1963. Young people know the name, but they don’t feel the vibe.

The second factor is the issues. Most third party campaigns are either “single issue” or more generally “ideological.” They’re about the candidates’ platforms and policy positions. When voters go for a Libertarian, Green, or Constitution Party candidate, it’s because they care deeply about an issue or set of issues that the “major” parties either get “wrong” or ignore completely.

Kennedy’s policy suite was a dog’s breakfast of contradictions (anti-war on Ukraine, “pro-Israel” on Gaza), flip-flops (“pro-choice” early in the race then supporting a federal ban at the 2023 Iowa State Fair; calling for  prosecution of “climate deniers” back when then supporting free speech as a candidate),  and too-niche obsessions (he’s more generally “anti-vaccine” than the significant voter bloc outraged by COVID-19 mandates).

As Stewart Lawrence puts it at CounterPunch, he’s “a man with no enduring allegiance to an ideology, a party or even a platform who is willing to sell his campaign and his support to the highest bidder — in exchange for his own personal and political advancement.”

He saw, and seized, his opportunity to sell out.

Supporters who thought he was the “real deal” got conned.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Harris’s Economic Pitch: More Expensive Houses With Less In Their Pantries

Kamala Harris on the phone with Justin Trudeau.

As Democrats whoop it up at their somewhat vestigial (they’ve already nominated Kamala Harris for president in a “virtual vote”) national convention in Chicago, they seem relatively enthused by her economic platform — far more enthused than American consumers will be with its results if implemented.

Two features in particular stand out for their combination of economic ignorance, likely disastrous results, and, unfortunately, political popularity.

First, Harris proposes a federal ban on “price gouging” by sellers of food and groceries.

Second, she touts $25,000  in “down payment assistance” for first-time homebuyers.

Yes, “price gouging” sounds like a bad thing (that’s why it’s called “gouging,” to make it sound bad.) The real term for laws against it is “price controls.”

We’ve tried price controls in the past, and the results are in: They always result in shortages.

Maybe you’ll pay less for that head of lettuce or package of ground beef … if you can find it. But you’re a lot less likely to find it.

Holding prices artificially low by government edict tells producers — at least those producers who aren’t just wiped out of business entirely — that their money is better invested in something other than the price-controlled products.

By all means, enjoy that $3.99 ribeye that isn’t on the shelf in the spot marked “ribeye” when you do your shopping.

As for handing out $25,000 checks to millions of home-buyers, the main effect will be to drive up the price of that house you want to buy … by about $25,000. The word for more money chasing the same amount of goods is “inflation.”

Sure, more houses might get built (especially since Harris also proposes tax credits for homebuilders), but they’ll be more expensive houses.  A government check on the front end won’t reduce your final cost on the back end. Maybe the $25,000 will get you closer to your down payment, but your mortgage payments will be higher or go on for longer.

Not that her major party opponent’s plans make any more sense.

Donald Trump’s “Tariff Man” act, which Harris criticizes even though Joe Biden just continued the Trump-era tariffs and even added some new ones, has been jacking up your cost of living for several years now … and he’s promised to put that on steroids.

Nor does either candidate offer any serious proposals to cut federal spending and balance the federal budget. It’s all tax and spend, all day long, in every direction.

OK, not EVERY direction. If Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver wins in November, he’ll whip out his veto pen and push Congress to cut its spending, pay down its debt, and get its grubby hands out of your pockets.

Yes, I know how unlikely that is. But a man can dream.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY