Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein
had a little
bit of fun on Memorial Day where he
successfully trolled right wingers
by posting a picture of someone who
is not his grandfather,
alleging that it's his grandfather,
and getting Republicans to retweet
about him on Memorial Day.
Here is the tweet in question, and
it was retweeted by Dinesh D'Souza.
He writes, Sir, my grandpa's a big
fan of yours and as a veteran,
he would be thrilled if you could
retweet this photo of him for
Memorial Day.
Here he is as a young private first
class.
Happy Memorial Day.
Now, the photo of the individual
is, again,
not Ken Klippenstein grandfather,
it's Lee Harvey Oswald, the person
who is thought to have killed JFK.
And of course, Dinesh D'Souza
retweets it without realizing that
it's Lee Harvey Oswald.
Matt Gaetz did the same.
And by the time that Matt Gaetz had
retweeted it with, or quote,
tweeted it with a American flag
emoji, Ken Klippenstein changed his
Twitter handle to Matt Gaetz is
a pedo, a reference to Matt Gaetz
allegedly spending money or
paying a minor for sex.
That's what he's being
investigated for right now by
the Justice department.
So Ryan, as a colleague of
Ken Klippenstein's, as someone who
works with Ken Klippenstein over at
the Intercept,
what do you have to say about this?
There are some allegations that
Klippenstein has been let go
from the Intercept as a result of
this behavior.
>> Allegations that have been
forwarded publicly by one Ken-
[LAUGH] >> So yeah, so Ken loves to
layer one prank on top of another,
on top of another, so
it's just kind of fun house mirror
room full of Kenny pranks.
Going into this Memorial Day,
he was spending some time thinking
about how he was going to
up his game from before where he,
I think was it last year that he
did Lieutenant William Calley, who
was the mass murderer from My Lai.
You got several people to wish,
and that one, I thought that was
a little bit more impressive
because it included his name in it.
And so you didn't just have to
recognize, Lee Harvey Oswald pretty
has a pretty famous face if you're
kind of a history buff, but Bill
Calley, and he said something like,
he was my grandfather, Bill Calley.
So most military figures, officials
are familiar with that name,
and yet
he got some to retweet it anyway.
So Lee Harvey Oswald was a clever
one.
I guess we'll see what next
Memorial Day brings.
>> Right, what's also amazing
is that he succeeds in these pranks
over and over again.
Republicans, maybe after this,
the right wing will be a little
smarter about what he tries to get
them to tweet.
But it's amazing that they fell for
it after the previous pranks
that he's pulled.
By the way,
Matt Schlapp, the person who puts
the CPAC conference, I believe it
is together, also retweeted it.
Wow, Ken Klippenstein,
it's my honor to retweet the photo
of a veteran on a day we remember
his fallen friends.
God bless your grandfather and
America, or the American flag,
I guess.
But I thought that the response
from Candace Owens was the best
because, look, Owens has never
presented herself as a history buff
or an avid reader of anything,
to be honest.
And so, as Ken mentions, I think I
made Candace Owens short circuit,
laughing my ass off.
And so what he's referring to there
and he has the screenshots to prove
it, apparently, Candace Owens
believed that Ken Klippenstein had
done some Photoshop in this prank,
but he had not.
So she had written, you're making
a mockery of a day that is meant to
memorialize men that died so
that you and other anti-American
leftists can laugh at their
sacrifices by photoshopping
a murderer into their uniforms.
You are deranged, as is any person
applauding your efforts.
Well, I'm applauding his efforts,
so I guess I'm deranged.
But Ken Klippenstein did not
Photoshop that photo of
Lee Harvey Oswald.
Can you talk about that
a little bit, Ryan?
>> He was a serviceman.
And there's a lot we still need to
learn about what his involvement
was with the American government,
with the CIA beyond his service.
We do know that he spent that
extraordinarily suspicious amount
of time in the Soviet Union,
in Mexico City.
To me,
among the many disappointments of
the Trump administration was that
he never ceded to Roger Stone's
insistence that he release the rest
of the classified JFK material.
What absolute, pitiful cowardice?
This is a guy,
Trump, who had been talking about
the Kennedy assassination his
entire adult life, ruminating about
conspiracy theories.
And by some fluke chance, he winds
up president of the United States
and doesn't take the opportunity to
declassify it.
Just what an abysmal failure and
what a total coward.
And so we're going to have to
wait longer.
I don't expect Joe Biden to deliver
something that Trump didn't.