‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ trends on Twitter after conservatives get punked on Memorial Day

On Memorial Day, Twitter blew up as several prominent right-wing figures were tricked into honoring Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

The ruse was pulled off by The Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein, who shared a picture of Oswald as a young private first class to several conservative accounts with the request, "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." Right-wingers who fell for the prank included Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), American Conservative Union president and lobbyist Matt Schlapp, and revisionist history documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza.

Klippenstein has pulled this prank multiple times before.

In 2019, he tricked former Rep. Steve King (R-IA) into wishing a happy Independence Day to his "uncle," fictional Marine Col. Nathan Jessup from "A Few Good Men," and then for good measure, changed his Twitter name to "Steve King is a white supremacist" so that phrase would show up on the congressman's page. And in 2020, he fooled former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell into bidding a happy Veterans Day to his "grandpa" Bill Calley, the war criminal behind the Mỹ Lai massacre.