I wouldn't call it FAFO given 11 presidents in a row including Trump sat on the files. It wasnt fucking around, it was established practice. Your other point, that he campaigned on it is true. It was possibly his least consequential lowest bar act. I'm not personally sensing a massive public THIS IS WHY I VOTED FOR HIM moment on it tbh. Maybe in the rooms people discuss pizzagate, the grand conspiracy comes up from time to time but I can't imagine many of the core caring about MLK. That may have been a sop to black voters.
I will be truly interested in both files, how much new emerges. Imagine when the same level of info comes out about Reagan and the Iran thing, Kissinger and Nixon and the Vietnam war, Clinton in Bosnia, Clinton & Bush and Iraq. Future historians will have a field day. I'll be interested but they just don't feel very .. big.
The established practice is fucking around. It’s not just any one thing. There’s a widespread feeling among Trump voters that the executive branch is secretive and unresponsive. There is a continuity between the MLK/JFK stuff all the way to executive-branch refusal to enforce immigration laws (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...). E.g. the deep state turned H1B from what Congress promised was a temporary worker program into a pathway to permanent immigration.
