Claim Democrats shot 4 presidents, MLK Jr. and Charlie Kirk gets the facts wrong

The claim perpetuates the falsehood that political violence generally comes from the left. Data shows the opposite. Published Sept. 17, 2026 Claim: The people who assassinated or attempted to assassinate presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.; and conservative pundit Charlie Kirk all were registered Democrats. Rating: On Sept. 9, 2026, just under a year after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative commentator and co-founder of Turning Point USA, people posted an image online suggesting Kirk was just the latest victim in a stretch of political violence committed by Democrats. According to the image, Democrats had killed or attempted to kill four U.S. presidents — Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump — as well as U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and Kirk. Snopes readers contacted us, asking for an investigation of the claim. It's demonstrably false. We found no publicly available evidence suggesting that any of the seven assassins or attempted assassins were registered Democrats. Before examining the claim in full, it's worth noting a few things about its framing. Framing First: The post neatly aligns with a conservative talking point suggesting political violence in the United States comes from the left. Donald Trump has famously used dramatic language such as "far-left" and "radical" to describe the entirety of the Democratic Party. He designated antifa, a loosely organized network of left-wing activists, a terrorist organization in September 2025, and announced a task force against "Radical Left Terrorism" in July 2026. The repeated description of the Democratic Party as "far-left" without proof of its factual accuracy has become relatively commonplace in conservative spaces, and this post is an excellent example of that rhetorical framework. While reputable evidence has consistently shown that the amount of left-wing political violence has grown in recent years, it still pales in comparison to political violence from the right. One paper written by a domestic terrorism researcher at the State University of New York at Oswego examined data from the Department of Homeland Security and the University of Maryland and found 269 cases of extremist political violence between 1990 and 2020. People with right-wing beliefs committed 227 of those acts. A report by the Anti-Defamation League found that people with right-wing beliefs perpetrated 76% of politically motivated killings across the U.S. between 2015 and 2024, noting that left-leaning political violence often targeted property instead of people. Second: The political figures mentioned in the post span 150 years of history, and across that time, the two main political parties in the United States slowly realigned their positions. This is a deeply thorny topic with much nuance, but as a basic overview: Historically, both the Republicans and the Democrats had progressive and conservative blocs. In the wake of the Great Depression, for instance, a broad group of voters called the New Deal coalition elected Franklin D. Roosevelt as president. That coalition was made up of the conservative, rural South (the Democratic Party's traditional stronghold after the Civil War) and more-progressive, working-class and minority voters in urban cities. But Roosevelt's progressive policies greatly influenced the trajectory of the party, and as new politicians attempted to follow in his footsteps, they alienated the rural South's conservative Democrats (sometimes called the Dixiecrats) who supported policies of segregation. In a tactic later called the Southern Strategy, Republicans began catering to the conservative voters who felt left behind by the national Democrats' support of civil rights. The strategy worked. Once-Democratic strongholds slowly began electing Republicans, first at the national level during Richard Nixon and Reagan's presidencies, and then at the state and local level in the 1990s. So while the claim implies that the Democratic Party is the party of the left, that has not always been the case. Painting such a large organization as an unchanging monolith over time does not allow for the nuance this discussion deserves. Third: The post cherry-picks four of the most famous assassination victims in American history as its martyrs. It lists Lincoln and Kennedy, but there are two other, lesser-known presidents who were assassinated — James Garfield and William McKinley. McKinley was shot by an anarchist, which would ostensibly help convey the post's message. The inclusion of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Charlie Kirk, none of whom were presidents, also raises the question of why figures like Malcolm X, Huey Long or Harvey Milk aren't on the list. And by mentioning Reagan and Trump, the list expands to attempted assassinations. Theodore Roosevelt was famously shot in the chest while giving a speech, and he isn't included either. There have been enough presidential assassination attempts that Stephen Sondheim wrote a musical about it, but none of those failed attempts is mentioned in the image. Finally, and this bears repeating: People with normal political views generally do not attempt to assassinate people. Attempting to scrutinize their views in order to place them on some sort of political compass chart is an exercise in futility. Political views of the assassins The seven people on the list and their assassins, attempted assassins and alleged assassins are: Abraham Lincoln, assassinated by John Wilkes Booth John F. Kennedy, assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated by James Earl Ray Robert F. Kennedy, assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan Ronald Reagan, assassination attempted by John Hinckley Jr. Donald Trump, assassination attempted by Thomas Crooks Charlie Kirk, assassination allegedly by Tyler Robinson (trial pending) (There are countless conspiracy theories surrounding assassinations, and of these seven, about Kennedy and King in particular. The cases for and against such theories have been well documented in other places, but the claim does not make any such assumptions. Thus, we examine Oswald and Ray). In sum, there is no evidence suggesting any of the assassins, attempted assassins or alleged assassins were registered Democrats. Three — Oswald, Sirhan and Robinson — could reasonably be said to have held at least some left-wing views, but none ever registered as a Democrat. (Furthermore, Sirhan is not a U.S. citizen and therefore could not have voted.) John Wilkes Booth was registered with the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s, according to Factcheck.org. He certainly hated Lincoln's Republican Party, given his defense of slavery and the Confederate States of America, but Snopes found no evidence he was a registered Democrat. Lee Harvey Oswald became disaffected by America and began expressing pro-Soviet views after dropping out of high school to join the Marines in 1956, according to Britannica. He left the Marines in 1959 and moved to the Soviet Union for a few years before returning to America in 1962. Given that, it's relatively safe to conclude that at least some of Oswald's views were left-wing. However, there is no evidence he was a registered Democrat. James Earl Ray held racist views throughout his life, according to interviews with people close to him, and he appeared to be involved with the American Independent Party in 1968, a third-party organized for the segregationist former governor of Alabama, George Wallace, as he ran for president. Wallace was a Democrat, we should note — but there is no such evidence for Ray. Sirhan Sirhan was born in Palestine and immigrated to the U.S. in his youth. He openly admitted to shooting Robert F. Kennedy "for [his] country," as he was vocally opposed to the nation of Israel, while Kennedy had publicly stated support for Israel during his 1968 presidential campaign. Sirhan's stance on Israel does align with modern left-wing beliefs in the U.S., but using that as evidence that he holds left-wing political beliefs (much less is a Democrat) is complicated by the fact he was born in Palestine — his motivation seems to lie on an entirely separate axis. Regardless, because he is not a U.S. citizen, he is not eligible to vote in elections. As such, there is no evidence suggesting he is or was a Democrat. John Hinckley Jr. infamously shot Ronald Reagan in an attempt to impress the actress Jodie Foster. Reagan survived, and Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was released from the mental hospital to his mother's care in 2016. Hinckley was a member of the National Socialist Party of America — a neo-Nazi group — for one year, according to The Washington Post, but was expelled in 1979 because he was "too extremist and violent." Given that Hinckley requested (and was denied) ballots several times while he was living at the mental hospital, it is perfectly reasonable to suspect he may be registered to vote. Hinckley now lives in Virginia, but that state does not make its voter registration public and therefore it is unclear whether he votes and if so, for what party. In posts on X, Hinckley has suggested that he is anti-communist and apolitical, despite reportedly founding a political party in 2022. Thomas Crooks, Trump's would-be assassin, does not have clear politics. Snopes previously reported that he donated $15 to a Democratic PAC in 2021. We also reported that he was a registered Republican. Profiles of Crooks released after the shooting describe him as lonely and intelligent, and don't often mention politics. Reviews of his internet history suggest that Crooks searched for multiple political figures, including Democrats, when deciding on a target. Tyler Robinson, who is alleged to have fatally shot Charlie Kirk, was supposedly a Republican who donated to Trump's campaign — two claims already debunked by Snopes. Though reports portray Robinson as growing up in a Republican family, his mother said he had become "pro-gay and trans-rights oriented," in the recent past and had begun dating his roommate, reportedly a transgender woman. Two of the bullets engraved on the scene contained messages generally associated with the left — "Hey fascist! Catch!," and "Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Ciao, Ciao," — though, as Kyle Chayka wrote in The New Yorker, all four in context "revealed less about his political affiliations than his fluency in deep internet culture. […] In isolation, the references are vague enough to be interpreted every which way." Regardless, he was not a registered Democrat either. Sources Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. | The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr. Accessed 15 Sept. 2026.Assassins | Music Theatre International. 29 Dec. 2020, https://www.mtishows.com/assassins.Bullet Speech | Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. https://www.trlibrary.com/bullet-speech. Accessed 15 Sept. 2026.By. "JOHN HINCKLEY REFUSED VOTE IN D.C." 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