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Lee Harvey Oswald, the only successful presidential assassin since 1901, was a lone gunman

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60% Informative

Thomas Matthew Crooks is no longer alive to tell his story, and investigators are still trying to understand why he fired at former president Donald Trump .

If we compare Crooks to Lee Harvey Oswald , we find no signs so far of the fatal mix of ideology and arrogance that compelled Oswald to target John F. Kennedy in 1963 .

But there are similarities, a role for conspiratorial thinking in Americans ' reaction to crimes.

Oswald ’s motive for killing the president was evident, at least to me.

Oswald was a self-identified Marxist pundit with a dismissive wife, Lee seethed that he worked for $ 1.25 per hour.

Oswald had all the telltale characteristics of an assassin focused on the murder of a public figure.

Crooks may have seen billboards or social-media messages warning that Trump is an existential threat to democracy.

In the Kennedy case, though, it is highly unlikely that any hostility in Dallas motivated Oswald to kill Kennedy .

Trump, like Walker , survived his narrow miss, but in a climate of hate more profound than that of Dallas in 1963 .