Trump fuels JFK conspiracy theories after ‘somewhat unspectacular’ file release
President Donald Trump suggested the man who shot and killed the country’s 35th president decades ago may not have acted alone.
After former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the government said Lee Harvey Oswald had carried out the murder and had acted alone. Yet, conspiracy theories about what happened on the day have circulated for decades, with many in doubt that Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination.
Earlier this month, Trump released thousands of top-secret files pertaining to Kennedy’s murder to the public. He weighed in on their contents, and his thoughts on the assassination, during an interview with Outkick radio host Clay Travis over the weekend.
“Do you think Oswald killed JFK personally?” Travis asked.
“I do, and I always felt that,” Trump replied. “Of course, he was, was he helped.”
Federal investigators through the 1964 Warren Commission initially told the public that Oswald acted alone. However, the House Select Committee on Assassinations released a report in 1979 that disagreed with the commission’s findings that Kennedy’s shooter worked in isolation.
“I don’t think we fully understood how many people just could not give up the idea that there was a conspiracy,” Burt Griffin, assistant counsel on the Warren Commission and author of JFK, Oswald and Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth, told TIME Magazine in 2023.
The president also commented on roughly 88,000 federal files related to the assassination that he recently ordered to be released. While the classified documents were expected to shed further light on the notorious murder, Trump told Travis he didn’t believe they had revealed anything too shocking.
“I think the papers have turned out to be somewhat unspectacular,” he said. “And maybe that’s a good thing.”
Trump also reflected on the two assassination attempts that have been carried out against himself, first in Pennsylvania last July and then at his Florida golf club in September 2024. When pressed specifically on his thoughts about the Pennsylvania shooting during a campaign rally in Butler, the president suggested he wasn’t convinced the gunman charged with the attempts had acted alone. Trump expressed the same thought concerning the second Florida assassination attempt.
“I really can’t be sure,” he said. “Because it bothers me that he had three apps [on his phone], and two of them were foreign, and maybe it was more apps. And it bothered me that the other guy [who was arrested for attempting to assassinate him in Florida] had like, 18 phones. I thought it was six, but it was 18.”
“And the FBI has been very straight with me, I believe,” he continued. “I think they weren’t at the beginning, but now I think they were. They told me a lot about the case.”
Thomas Matthew Crooks carried out the Butler assassination attempt, where the Secret Service came under fire for failing to swiftly neutralize the gunman. The head of the agency at the time, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned as details emerged showing stunning security lapses allowed Crooks to carry out the attack.
Trump told Travis he thought full details regarding the attempts on his life might never be fully determined, but ruled out speculation that the FBI might have been involved in the matter.
“I think maybe it won’t be able to be determined, but I don’t believe it’s, you know, it’d something sinister by the FBI, the FBI is doing a good job, and [FBI Director] Kash [Patel] is going to do a great job.”
