In a news story that should, in no way, be construed as an effort to distract the American people from his latest round of presidential jackassery by tossing the world’s most prominent conspiracy nuts a big, hefty chunk of crazy-meat, Donald Trump has announced that he’s going to release the U.S. government’s final set of files on the JFK assassination. Trump made the announcement via Twitter—the world’s leading provider of rational, non-deranged discourse—this morning, noting that the White House was waiting on receipt of “further information” before releasing the info.
By doing so, Trump is complying with a deadline set back in 1992, which said that this final batch of material—which isn’t expected to do much to change the officially accepted “Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone” version of events— had to be released by October 26, 2017. According to The New York Times, it’s within Trump’s authority to block the release, though, something that’s apparently been requested by intelligence agencies worries that the locked-up documents will compromise American security interests.
But c’mon: This is Donald Trump, a man who essentially became president based off of shitty, evidence-free conspiracy theories about his predecessor’s birth certificate. (Not to mention his claims during the primaries that Ted Cruz’s father was an Oswald associate.) We have it on no less firm authority than professional Babadook cosplayer Roger Stone Jr. that he’s used his considerable influence with the president to encourage Trump to release the JFK documents. (Stone made these comments to Alex Jones on Infowars, because of course he did.)
In any case—and having successfully stoked the conspiracy theorist fires for another day—Trump then got back to his real job: Bragging about the stock market, and making fun of a Florida congresswoman who’s been critical of his behavior toward the families of dead soldiers. All in a day’s work.