Trump’s JFK files release is an unexpected act against misinformation
Ever since his assassination in Dallas Texas, over 60 years ago the death of President John F. Kennedy has been subject to speculation and conspiracy theory. Last month, the Trump administration released the final remaining confidential files on the assassination of President Kennedy. Laurence Vardaxoglou writes that while President Trump is typically known for promoting misinformation, the release of the Kennedy files may well be a significant contribution to the fight against it. With Republicans being more trusting of Trump, the file release may well dampen belief in JFK conspiracy theories.
In March the Trump administration released around 64,000 remaining documents related to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The assassination of JFK has long been the subject of popular conspiracy theories. For decades now, more than half of Americans have rejected the official explanation for Kennedy’s death. And this belief has been fuelled, in part, by thousands of classified documents that were being withheld from the public.
As experts predicted, the unredacted versions of previously classified documents have not revealed any new evidence that supports the conspiracies. Research suggests that this might be enough for some to abandon their false beliefs about the Kennedy assassination and turn away from their conspiratorial mindset more generally. Although we will have to wait for future polling to learn more about the actual effect of the release of this batch of documents.
The “fake news” president fights misinformation
If belief in JFK conspiracy theories does start to wane, then it points to a peculiar contradiction in the 47th US president. So often guilty of spreading falsehoods, he has become synonymous with the rise of “fake news” in recent years. And yet President Trump stands to reduce belief in the most prevalent conspiracy theory in the US. He may well make a significant contribution to the fight against misinformation and disinformation.
According to successive Gallup polls since the 1960s, at least half of Americans consistently reject the official version of events that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. In 1976 and 2001, it was the case for as many as 81 percent. In 2023, 65 percent believed that there were others working with Oswald. And it is the most popular conspiracy theory in the US according to a recent YouGov survey. For example, just 20 percent of Americans believe that the government was behind 9/11.
As he signed the executive order to declassify the remaining material, Trump told reporters that “everything will be revealed”. But experts did not expect that we would learn anything new about Kennedy’s assassination. Indeed successive presidents had released the majority of documents, around 97 percent of documents about the assassination had already been made public by 2022. As historians, journalists and amateur sleuths poured over the recently released unredacted documents, the early signs are that there was not much of a reveal at all.
The popular conspiracy theory that Oswald was not a lone gunman, with proposed accomplices ranging from the US government to the mafia, is then not supported by the unredacted documents. Research tells us that this conclusion could influence belief in the conspiracy in one of two ways. Either believers exposed to this corrective information will double down on their beliefs, or it might reduce misperceptions. For example, researchers from Dartmouth College found that unredacted documents consistently lowered conspiracy beliefs.
Will Trump’s JFK document release increase public trust in government?
The acceptance of new information (and resistance to correction) is strongly influenced by perceptions of the source’s credibility, values, and worldviews. In signing an executive order, as he repeatedly pledged to do during the 2024 election campaign, President Trump has made himself the undisputed source of the newly released batch of documents. Believers in the JFK conspiracy theories are likely to consider that the president is strongly aligned with their own values and worldviews. For example, Republicans are much more likely to believe this conspiracy than Democrats.
Americans are also more likely to trust the current US government than trust the media for fair, full, and accurate facts. Around 44 percent trust Trump’s administration (rising to 84 percent amongst Republicans), compared to just 29 percent the media. It gives added weight to Trump’s personal musings on the JFK assassination. For example, Trump has recently rebuked a portion of conspiracy theorists by confirming that he has “always felt” that Oswald killed Kennedy.
Amongst a host of factors that predict conspiratorial thinking, lack of trust in institutions scores highly. The Trump administration stands to increase trust by releasing documents, with no redactions, that were previously withheld from the public due to their sensitive nature. That the US government has performed such an act of transparency is significant. The JFK conspiracy is driven by the belief that the government was actually involved in the shooting: 38 percent think that government was involved vs. 29 percent non-government actors.
Photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash
Joseph E. Uscinski of the University of Miami has argued that “many conspiracy theorists use the Kennedy Assassination theories as evidence of other supposed conspiracies”. Under this reading, JFK conspiracies can be considered to be so-called gateway conspiracy theories. The idea that believing in one falsehood can encourage belief in others. It might be that a collapse in belief in the JFK conspiracies has a knock-on effect on belief in other conspiracy theories, leading people to reject other conspiracies related to COVID-19 or election fraud for example.
The executive order that Trump signed to release the remaining classified documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy includes the text: “The American people deserve transparency and truth”. So often criticised for imposing his truth on affairs, this time Trump is providing us something that more closely resembles the truth. That is, the truth that conforms to the available facts. And in doing so, Trump stands to dampen belief in the JFK conspiracy theories, and conspiratorial thinking more generally. It represents yet another contradiction in a President who promises to end all wars whilst threatening the invasion of Greenland.