A journalist tricked high-profile Republicans into retweeting a picture of JFK's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, in military uniform

• Ken Klippenstein tricked high-profile Republicans into retweeting a picture of JFK's assassin.
• Lee Harvey Oswald trended after Klippenstein asked Matt Gaetz to retweet his military portrait.
• Candace Owens said the portraits were Photoshopped, despite Oswald being a former military member.

The journalist Ken Klippenstein tricked prominent Republicans, such as Congressman Matt Gaetz, Matt Schlapp, and Dinesh D'Souza, into retweeting a military portrait of President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, on Memorial Day.

Klippenstein, a reporter who covers national security for The Intercept, tweeted at the men asking them to retweet a military portrait of Oswald under false pretenses.

The journalist, who's known for his Twitter trolling, previously got into a Twitter spat with Elon Musk after sharing an old photo of the Tesla CEO and Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's associate.

-beth (@bethbourdon) May 31, 2021

"Congressman, 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. Here he is as a young Private First Class," Klippenstein tweeted along with a photo of Oswald in military uniform.

Gaetz retweeted the photo with an American-flag emoji in the caption, and Schlapp tweeted, "Wow @kenklippenstein it's my honor to retweet the photo of a veteran on a day we remember his fallen friends. God bless your grandfather."

Some Twitter users mocked the Republicans for falling for the prank. Conservative commentator Candace Owens, on the other hand, found the tweets reprehensible.

"It is not 'political correctness' to have a soul and modicum of decency. Reminder: these men DIED - the majority of them on foreign soil - so you could be free," Owens tweeted at Klippenstein. "You do not photoshop murderers into their uniforms so you can have a laugh."

Twitter users were quick to mention that Oswald was a member of the US military prior to the assassination of JFK, and that the portrait Republicans were retweeting was not Photoshopped at all - it was Oswald's military portrait.

"I think I made Candace Owens short circuit lmao," Klippenstein tweeted alongside screenshots of their exchange on Twitter.