Is this true? Abraham Lincoln, john Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martimn Luther King, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk wwre all shot by Democrats

Checked on January 28, 2026
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Executive summary

The claim that Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk were “all shot by Democrats” is false: the historical record identifies individual shooters with varied backgrounds and motives, and none of the authoritative accounts in the reporting provided supports the blanket assertion that each attacker was a member of the Democratic Party [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7].

1. The claim, succinctly judged

The allegation collapses complex, separate crimes into a single partisan narrative that the contemporary reporting does not support; primary accounts identify distinct perpetrators—John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, John Hinckley Jr., the 2024 Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks (as reported), and the assailant in the Charlie Kirk case referenced by later press—without evidence that each was a Democrat [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7].

2. What the sources say about who shot whom

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer, at Ford’s Theatre in 1865 [1] [2]; President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas in 1963 and Lee Harvey Oswald is widely identified as the assassin in contemporary reporting [2] [5]; Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed in 1968 by Sirhan Sirhan, who later said Middle East politics motivated him [3]; civil‑rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968 by James Earl Ray [4]; President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981 [5] [8]; reporting on the July 2024 rally shooting identifies Thomas Matthew Crooks as the shooter whose shots grazed Donald Trump’s ear [6] [8]; and press compilations covering later political‑violence outbreaks list the Charlie Kirk shooting among recent incidents [7] [9]. None of these pieces frame the attackers as uniformly Democratic Party operatives [1] [3] [5] [6].

3. Motives are diverse and often non‑partisan

Contemporary coverage emphasizes that motives span Confederate sympathy, foreign‑policy grievances, personal ideation and mental illness rather than simple party affiliation: Booth acted as a Confederate sympathizer [1] [2], Sirhan invoked the Israeli‑Palestinian conflict as a motive for RFK’s murder [3], Hinckley’s shooting of Reagan has been tied to acute psychosis and personal obsession rather than partisan strategy [5] [2], and analysts warn that many mass shooters externalize personal grievances and do not act as agents of a political party [10]. Reporting on the Trump rally shooting likewise portrays the act as an assassination attempt with individualized motives under FBI investigation, not evidence of a Democratic Party conspiracy [6] [3].

4. The factual gap the claim exploits

The viral claim uses the coincidence that victims were often associated with Democrats (Lincoln and the Kennedys being historical icons, MLK linked to civil‑rights alliances, Trump and Kirk to the right) to imply partisan culpability, but the sources show shooters’ identities and stated motives are heterogeneous and in many cases explicitly apolitical or foreign‑policy driven [1] [3] [2] [10]. None of the cited reporting provides evidence tying each attacker to formal Democratic Party membership or to an organized Democratic plot [3] [6] [5].

5. Why this matters: propaganda, pattern‑seeking and the danger of false equivalence

As the press compilations and expert commentary note, America’s history of political shootings invites pattern‑seeking that can be manipulated into partisan narratives; commentators warn that conflating diverse crimes into a simple party‑blame storyline serves political agendas and misleads the public because it ignores documented shooter motives, mental‑health findings and forensic histories reported in the sources [11] [10] [8]. The reporting supplied does not substantiate the claim that “all” these figures were shot by Democrats, and careful reading shows the opposite: a kaleidoscope of perpetrators, not a single partisan hand [1] [3] [5] [6].

Want to dive deeper?
Who were the confirmed perpetrators of major U.S. political assassinations and what motives did they state?
How have conspiracy theories linked political violence to party organizations, and how have journalists debunked those claims?
What do experts say about the role of mental illness, ideology, and foreign‑policy grievances in U.S. political shootings?