Trump says he “watches the shows” to get military advice, but there’s a fair amount of evidence that most of his news comes from chain emails sent by America’s most unhinged uncles. He has repeated a number of claims from the far corners of the internet before—the most egregious examples being the time he saw “thousands” of Muslims cheering 9/11 and the other time an American general stopped terrorism by executing Muslims with bullets dipped in pig’s blood.
Trump was back at it on Tuesday, albeit with a more entertaining and less egregious fantasy. In an interview with Fox News, Trump referred to a story in The National Enquirer—the same tabloid that alleged that Cruz had multiple affairs—that identified Rafael Cruz as a man handing out pro-Castro leaflets with Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963. “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death—before the shooting. It’s horrible,” Trump said.
The National Enquirer’s report is thin on details, though it does quote a number of “experts” who say that the man with Oswald is Cruz. A release announcing the article is also full of equivocations: “The investigation into the mystery man who might very well be Rafael Cruz provides a potentially chilling look at the family history of the Republican presidential candidate.”
The initial story about the Cruz-Oswald connection wasn’t in The National Enquirer, however. It was on the “Wayne Madesn Report,” which Snopes describes as being “notoriously unreliable.” Donald Trump has still inexplicably not commented on the rumor that Ted Cruz, the son of the man who may have helped kill JFK, is the Zodiac Killer.