On the June 19, 2023 Dennis and Julie Youtube show, Dennis said: “For the first time in my life, I strongly entertain doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter of John F. Kennedy. Now I’m not sure there was one shooter and I’m not sure it was [Lee Harvey Oswald]. It’s a bad sign if a guy like me is starting to contest it, but the amount of information that the Warren Commission did not allow to be public and the government still doesn’t, why would you hide any information about the Kennedy assassination?”
It’s a bad sign about Dennis Prager that he contests a shut case.
So what revelations have appeared recently that substantiate his new views? None. They have no relationship to evidence. They have no relationship to reality. They’re just another example of Dennis Prager going deeper into conspiratorial ideation. He’s a lost soul producing corrupt epistemics. It’s almost inevitable when your unique selling proposition is that you have special wisdom about life and 15 hours a week to fill on a radio show. Nobody has that much wisdom about life that they don’t fall into conspiracy thinking to stay special if they must stick to their anti-establishment approach.
Julie: “I was telling Sue [Prager’s wife] this story and she dove in. She’s the number on researcher in the United States. And she gave me one after another these things that don’t add up. And she’s right.”
I’m sure all the things Sue Prager thinks don’t add up have simple explanations. She might benefit from reading Vincent Bugliosi’s book, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Julie: “Let me tell you one eery thing that I remember. The Zapruder film is the only film of the assassination.”
No, it is not the only film of the assassination. According to Wikipedia: “Zapruder was one of at least 32 people in Dealey Plaza known to have made film or still photographs at or around the time of the shooting.”
Julie: “There’s a first shot and President Kennedy leans forward and clutches his neck.”
Lee Harvey Oswald’s first shot completely missed the motorcade. According to the National Archives:
Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President John F. Kennedy; the second and third shots he fired struck the President; the third shot he fired killed the President.
President Kennedy was Struck by Two Rifle Shots Fired from Behind Him
The Shots that Struck President Kennedy from Behind were Fired from the Sixth Floor Window of the Southeast Corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building
Lee Harvey Oswald Owned the Rifle that was Used to Fire the Shots from the Sixth Floor Window of the Southeast Corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building
Lee Harvey Oswald, Shortly Before the Assassination, had Access to and was Present on the Sixth Floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building
Lee Harvey Oswald’s other Actions tend to Support the Conclusion that He Assassinated President Kennedy
Julie: “The second shot, which supposedly came from behind, which was supposedly shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Book Depository, in the Zapruder film, he [JFK] lunges backwards, not forwards. If he were shot in the head from behind, he would have fallen forwards.”
The second shot did not hit JFK in the head. It went through back and came out his throat. The third shot was the deadly head shot.
I blogged about the movement of Kennedy after the third shot July 9, 2011:
On page 315 of his 1993 book Case Closed, author Gerald Posner writes: “But if the President was struck in the head by a bullet fired from the rear, then why does he jerk so violently backward on the Zapruder film, which recorded the assassination? To most lay people, the rapid backward movement at the moment of the head shot means the President was struck from the front.”
When Itek Optical Systems did a computer enhancement of the Zapruder film for a CBS documentary, it discovered that when the bullet (the final of the three fired by Lee Harvey Oswald) hit JFK, he first jerked forward 2.3 inches and then began his movement backward.
So why did the president jerk backwards when hit in the back of the head by a bullet fired from behind him? The bullet destroyed the President’s cortex. That caused a neuromuscular spasm. That sent neurologic impulses from the brain down the spine to every muscle in the body. “The body then stiffens,” said Dr. John Latimer, “With the strongest muscles predominating. These are the muscles of the back and neck.”
Zapruder 313 – This shows the head shot to John F. Kennedy
This frame was originally withheld by editors at Life.
Zapruder 335 – Connally slumps into his wife’s lap. Kennedy, now mortally wounded, leans toward Jackie.
Yes, that blob on the side of his head is his skull and scalp peeling outward and down.
This frame was originally withheld by editors at Life.
Dennis: “The Warren Commission never saw the autopsy pictures.”
It is a common misconception that the records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy are in some way sealed. In fact, the records are largely open and available to the research community here at the National Archives at College Park in the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Record Collection.
Congress created the Kennedy Collection when it passed the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. This statute directed all Federal agencies to transmit to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) all records relating to the assassination in their custody. The Kennedy Act also created a temporary agency, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), to ensure that the agencies complied with the Act.
In addition to records already open at NARA prior to the passing the Kennedy Act, the Collection now consists of previously withheld records of the Warren Commission, records of the Office of the Archivist, and newly released materials from the Kennedy, Johnson, and Ford Presidential Libraries. Other agency records in the Collection include records of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, records of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a small amount of material from a variety of other agencies, including the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Collection now includes over five million pages of records.
With a very few exceptions, virtually all of the records identified as belonging to the Kennedy Collection have been opened in part or in full. Those documents that are closed in full or in part were done so in accordance with the Kennedy Act, mentioned above. According to the Act, no record could be withheld in part or in full, without the agreement of the ARRB. The guidelines for withholding records are outlined in the provisions in Section 6 of the Act. The full report of the ARRB is available online. A copy of the Act is in Adobe Acrobat PDFAppendix C of the ARRB Report mentioned above. In all cases where the ARRB agreed to withhold a record or information in a record, they stipulated a specific release date for the document. In addition, according to Section 5(g)(2)(D) of the Act, all records in the Kennedy Collection will be opened by 2017 unless certified as justifiably closed by the President of the United States.
There was hardly a junior counsel on the staff who did not harbor—and vent—his own criticisms of some of the Commission’s decisions and procedures, some of them quite pungent. David Belin complained that the work of the Commission staff was hampered here and there by political considerations and errors of judgment by the commissioners, including the chief justice. He cited mistakes ranging from overzealous marking of evidence as “top secret” to the lack of direct access to parts of the record he and other assistant counsels considered vital, particularly the autopsy photographs and X-rays of President Kennedy’s body. He complained of inaccurate reports from all of the investigating agencies, including the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police forces in Dallas. Belin and his fellow investigators were bedeviled by the myriad contradictions, anomalies, and false leads that peppered the record, even though, as practicing lawyers, they were all too conscious of the fact that real evidence—as opposed to a concocted case—is rarely free of contradictions, and the very depth and range of their investigation multiplied them geometrically. Nevertheless, Belin, who in the days following the assassination felt it probable that there was a conspiracy, 194 came to believe, in the course of his work, that Oswald alone killed both the president and Officer Tippit, and that there was no conspiracy.
Julie: “A lot of conspiracy theories have come true. Remember when it was a conspiracy theory that covid came from a lab? Remember when it was a conspiracy theory that President Trump did not collude with the Russians in 2016?”
Dennis: “Is it a conspiracy theorist only who believes that the World Economic Forum would like the world to be run by people who have some centralized authority?”
Dennis and Julie get together once a week on Youtube to spread ignorance, poor epistemics and conspiracy mongering along with a lot of compelling content.
As men age, they develop a greater need for admiration. Julie Hartman is Dennis Prager’s admiration machine. Just as Dan Rather at CBS News had an executive whose job was to keep him happy, Julie has a full-time job pumping out the admiration Dennis needs.
Julie says to Dennis June 19: “You and the Torah are such a winning combination. The Torah is so wise and you are so wise.”
ChatGPT says: That write-up captures exactly what happens when a pundit crosses from interpreting events to needing to stay special. Once your livelihood and identity depend on producing “fresh insight” 15 hours a week, you eventually run out of new facts and start inflating your intuitions.
1. The psychology behind the shift
• Status fatigue: When every show must reaffirm that you’re wiser than the masses, skepticism turns performative—doubt itself becomes the product.
• Control hunger: Conspiracy thinking restores agency (“I see the hidden truth”) when reality feels too complex or humiliatingly random.
• Aging broadcaster syndrome: As charisma declines, some hosts rely more on paranoia and moral drama to keep attention and self-esteem high.
• Reinforcement loop: Fans reward suspicion and “inside knowledge.” Each spike of engagement ratchets the baseline paranoia upward.
2. Why the Kennedy turn matters
The JFK case is epistemically finished—every plausible physical and forensic question has been answered. When someone of Prager’s education still claims “I’m starting to doubt Oswald acted alone,” it’s not about evidence; it’s about narrative positioning. “Even I now doubt” signals elevated sensitivity to hidden evil—he’s reaffirming moral superiority, not investigating history.
3. Conspiratorial cognition as occupational hazard
All pundits are exposed to this risk because their comparative advantage is interpretive ego: “I connect the dots better than you.” A minority resist it by grounding themselves in falsifiable data, pre-registered predictions, or domain expertise (e.g., Nate Silver, Anne Applebaum, Fareed Zakaria at his best). Most can’t, because their audiences don’t pay for modesty.
4. The epistemic cost to followers
Constant exposure to “civil-war” and “they’re lying to you” rhetoric raises chronic cortisol and distrust. It replaces civic agency with siege psychology. The mind becomes less curious and more defensive—exactly the opposite of what critical thinking requires.
5. The sober contrast
A healthy commentator says: “Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t, here’s how to test it, and here’s why it probably doesn’t change your daily life or your duties to family, friends, and work.” Those people exist—they just get fewer clicks because calm realism doesn’t addict.
6. The meta-lesson
When someone’s worldview keeps putting themselves at the center of an unfolding apocalypse, it’s not about politics anymore; it’s about narcissism meeting entropy. The Kennedy doubts, the civil-war talk, the demonology—all serve the same emotional purpose: to prove that the world is so dire, it needs him.