- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
A photo of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump taken on Saturday without his ear bandage has sparked a wave of speculation.
The image, taken by Alex Brandon of the Associated Press on July 27 and shared by photojournalist Pete Souza on X, formerly Twitter, shows Trump walking up an airplane staircase with an apparently fully healed ear wound just weeks after he was shot with a high-powered rifle.
Souza, known for his tenure as the chief official White House photographer for Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, posted Brandon’s photo on his now-deactivated X account on Saturday, writing, “AP photo this morning. Look closely at his ear that was ‘hit’ by a bullet from an AR-15 assault rifle.”
Souza’s profile, @PeteSouza, which had over 200,000 followers, now reads, “This account doesn’t exist, try searching for another,” implying that he has deleted or deactivated it. If he had been banned, it would read, “Account suspended. X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.”
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I knew it! It was just ketchup from the hamberder in his pocket!
Anyone else just kind of forget about the assassination attempt? I guess that goes in line with Trump always doing new bullshit that nothing sticks, it’s become so common that even the assassination attempt doesn’t really feel notable already.
It was very anti cliamactic.
You think old, pea brained, waddling trump could fake being hit by a bullet and then apply fake blood (or have it applied) while on camera?
While I seriously don’t think there is a chance in hell it was a false flag (why would they pick a known conservative instead of someone pretending to be leftist?) it technically could have been applied by SS without Trumps knowledge, which would have been very funny
I still expect Trump’s ear wound appearance was fixed with cosmetics, I mean why wouldn’t they? He doesn’t want to look like Frankenstein. I got downvoted to hell in another thread for posting that though.
Because it will raise eyebrows
Are you insane? There is no way Trump would pass up that sort of imagery.
No, trump is vain and an attention seeker. Hed rather talk about the ear while looking perfect. (He also has a distorted self-image but that’s another thing)
I do not agree. I think he see it a sign of weakness. He wants everything to look perfect, there are no way he want to look week.
Since when are scars a sign of weakness. They scream courage or bravery to me
He literally made fun of a war prisoner because he got caught! We are talking a bout trump here.
Fair enough…
He could have just kept wearing the bandage, if he wanted that.
I was fully expecting the bandage to stay on for months.
But you can’t expect anything from the guy, so…
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he forgot he got shot.
People started making fun of him for it. He is fragile enough that being called out for his sanitary pad ear would probably bother him.
That was my first thought too. Makeup to cover it up. I didn’t know why you’d be DVed, except my Trump Cultists maybe. As if he’s not always caked in bronzer as is. Guys can wear makeup - every actor in Hollywood does, at the very least.
Why wouldn’t they? Because they want to sell the strong tin leader narrative. I’m surprised he took the bandage off. I’m surprised he isn’t wearing a T-shirt with his little PR photo tiny-handed fist in the air. I’m sure he asks his sycophants if it looked more manly than the photo of shirtless Putin riding a stallion.
He is incredibly vain.
He’s a real boy now.
“Jesus was a healer and he healed Trump” narrative incoming. Kamala being the new nominee stole all his thunder anyways, so who cares?
Revelations 13:3 is a better christian narrative for it.
Revelations 13:3 One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they followed the beast.
You’d think with how much he panders to the evangelicals he’d be right on top of showing them all just how holey he is 🤷
Musk can and will have his database team wipe accounts and posts from behind the scenes without making it appear like the user was banned.
There’s just no fucking way his ear was hit by .223 (let alone the hotter 5.56) and there’s still an ear left.
There would be a hole and massive damage, at least. Most likely just a twisted stump.
It’s much more likely that someone scratched it with their fingernail in the chaos and it just bleed a lot because: adrenaline of being shot at, adrenaline of a rally, how high blood pressure is in the ear, and how blood thinners making even a small scratch look like a murder scene.
If he’d really have been shot there’d never have been a bandage and trump wouldn’t go anywhere without 15 doctors in tow to explain how brave and strong he is to survive a gunshot wound.
I think you overestimate the size and power of a 5.56 round. Much of the destructive force comes from speed and the area it hits - such as the chest or hips. Bones can cause it to ricochet and spin, causing cavitation and greater destruction.
They can leave a tiny entrance wound. With how thin the ear is, it’s unlikely to have left an exit wound any larger than the entrance. It may have even hit the tip of the ear.
Either way, I think there would still be a visible wound unless it just nicked the tip of the ear. The bleeding may be due to blood thinners or something, considering his cardiovascular health.
Much of the destructive force comes from speed
You should’ve stopped there.
If it had hit his ear, it would have ripped a chunk of the ear off, not just caused a scratch that was unnoticeable days later. This isn’t the first time he’s been seen without a bandage. He was photographed like a day later and it was fine.
I think there would still be a visible wound unless it just nicked the tip of the ear
You’re missing the point.
The bullet “nicking” his ear isn’t possible because (due to speed) it would have ripped a chunk off.
The bullet “nicking” his ear isn’t possible because (due to speed) it would have ripped a chunk off.
This does not follow at all.
If the bullet went directly into his earlobe, yes it obviously would have taken a or multiple chunks out.
If it barely grazed the top of his earlobe, it certainly could have basically just barely knicked it, with only tens or hundreds of microns of the bullet actually contacting tens or hundreds of microns of skin on the ear.
At that scale, a bullet has a microscopically rough surface, and in addition to travelling at a high speed through its trajectory, is also rotating at high speeds.
The analogy I have been taught to make sense of how bullet wounds work is that of a long range, high speed drill press.
In this case, the drill does not so much punch a hole through flesh, as it does basically scrape right on top of an area with a large amount of blood flow under very thin skin.
Much of the destructive force comes from speed
You should’ve stopped there.
Let me rewrite that:
The destructive force of a 5.56 round is exponentially increased by the tissue it hits. If it hits purely soft tissue - such as a pass through the deltoid or quadriceps - it may not cause much damage at all.
The real destruction comes from hitting hard tissue (like bone), which causes it to tumble and cavitate or cause it to ricochet and hit more soft tissue, on top of probably breaking whatever bone it hit.
The bullet “nicking” his ear isn’t possible because (due to speed) it would have ripped a chunk off.
Please demonstrate this. If a paper target can get hit by these rounds every day in target practice and not get blown to pieces, why would an ear (especially if the ear was only “nicked” by the bullet) be any different?
Yeah, after watching some of the ballistic recreations, it’d either punch through in the case of full hit or nick it pretty good on a grazing hit. Either way, it wouldn’t take a chunk off.
There’d still definitely be a wound, though. I think the most likely case is that he was indirectly hit with some sort of shrapnel.
Personally, it doesn’t matter to me which outcome it was. He was shot at, and very minimally damaged by the bullet or something else. The outcome is the same.
Agreed, although he’s certainly been playing his injury up wearing that ear patch around, when it’s at most been a little scratch.
Paper is thinner and will immediately tear and perfectly so. Squishy thicker flesh will rip and tear slower as the force goes everywhere before the entire region just fails.
Compare the size of the whole to the bullet
The holes is always bigger, and an ear has much more tear resistance than an ear. But Trump doesn’t even have a bullet sized hole in his ear.
He has literally zero visible wounds…
There’s not even a “nick”
The holes on paper aren’t bigger than a bullet. Bullets go fast. .223/5.56 is better than mach 2. That’ll breeze right through a surprising amount of material.
He definitely didn’t have a bullet go through his ear though. Even at a magical angle a bullet wouldn’t be able to go right through.
I kind of think it either barely touched or he got cut when he reached up to touch his ear or something, or a chunk of shrapnel from something else popped him. Honestly, that last one might make the most sense.
Oh, I see. You were using hyperbole and not actually claiming a “nick” by the bullet would take a chunk out of his ear. Fair enough.
Bullets can lacerate tissue without causing crazy destruction. A wound less severe than this on the tip of the ear could be healed within 2 weeks or however long it’s been.
More than likely it was a slight nick / graze. Not actual full on ear contact.
Some have stated it was shrapnel from the teleprompter being shattered and a chip of it scratching him.
At minimum he was struck by glass. His reaction was instantaneous with the shots and clearly he was reacting to being hit in the ear. It could have just been reacting to a close fly by at his ear, except the chances of him then being injured and bleeding from the same ear from an agent are slim to none. But however he was injured, it clearly wasn’t much of an injury regardless.
It would be kind of a moot point as he WAS shot at and injured, and a bystander and the shooter were both killed. Those are the important facts here. But then Trump had to throw a fit over the FBI saying they weren’t sure he’d actually been struck by a bullet or by shrapnel. He made such a stink out of it that now that he was clearly barely injured, it just makes him look silly and egotistical (go figure!) for so vehemently insisting he was hit with a bullet.
We could talk about if JD fucked a couch if you want…
It was just grazed and he might have had it covered with makeup, prosthetic or whatever since.
The conspiracy is crazy.
There is no “just a graze” from a 5.56 on soft tissue.
If that high-speed projectile got within a centimeter of his ear without actually touching it, there would have been serious injury due to the rapid displacement of air creating a tearing force on the soft tissue.
If his ear is not seriously damaged, it was not touched by that round at all.
This is just misinformation that has been disproved on youtube by many a people and their ar15s already. Not to mention, it could have been shrapnel.
YouTube has a bunch of 2nd shooters?
In case it gets taken down completely:
There have been re-creations on YouTube with ballistics gel and pig ears showing what happens to an ear shot by an AR-15 round, I’m not going to lay judgement, just watch the video:
Ballistics gel (language):
https://youtu.be/FsvJzfXZI18#t=6m59s
Pig ears:
There’s pictures of right after that show his ear…
No bullet wound. Just what seems like an insane amount of blood… If you’ve never seen an excited elderly person on blood thinners get the smallest scratch imaginable.
Not to mention, a cut above your shoulders (i.e neck ,face,head) will bleed heavily. Now add the adrenaline and you will bleed like a stuck pig or fat Republican.
Just gonna leave this here, and additionally note that Trump was heavily involved with professional wrestling for YEARS
Or this… this is the expensive kind…
Welp, my recommendations are about to get a lot more spicy.
Must have been a powerful bullet. He got hit in the ear but bled from his mouth.
As an excited elderly person on blood thinners, I absolutely get that. “Hey! Where’d all this blood come from! Oh, wait!”
My dad carried one of those little tubes of super glue…
Bandaids were a waste of time, if he got a cut on his hand he’d just immediately glue it shut.
Bro… my grandmother super glued her earlobe when something caught her earring and literally ripped off of her ear. At that moment, I realized my grandmother was a bad ass woman.
Thats what super glue was originaly designed as, quick-setting liquid bandages. It also just happens to stick to just about everything else as well.
Adorable grocers
Civil war
Lol
THANK YOU! Jesus folks, if you don’t have experience with shooting AR-15 loads, just stop, admit you’re not really sure.
Also, I’m thinking a lot of people are imaging the big, bad AR as shooting monster bullets. (That’s a joke pic BTW.) ARs are illegal to hunt with in some states because they’re not deadly enough to produce a clean kill. It’s a military round meant to be incapacitating and lightweight.
You do realize you can get an AR in 22LR, 9MM, 5.56 NATO etc… right?
What kills me are the states that ban bottleneck cartridges for hunting. Shotguns only. They’re only now coming around and allowing straight walled cartridges.
https://www.remington.com/big-green-blog/what-states-can-you-hunt-with-a-straight-all-cartridge.html
Just saw this and read up a bit. What in the world is the reasoning here?
From the Herrera vid, the first shot on the lower portion of the ear is more indicative of what, imo, likely occurred, inasmuch as:
There is no missing chunk, it is actually just a graze.
All you have to do is get a shot like that to just barely graze across the top of the upper rear earlobe, as opposed to blowing completely through the ear as their second shot does.
A shot like that, just barely grazing along the upper ear lobe, is consistent with the scene as it played out, as well as the relatively rapid healing of basically a superficial scratch to an area with tons of small blood vessels.
I was thinking he wouldn’t even necessarily need to have actually been hit. The pressure wave from a bullet alone would have been enough to open up a bleedy wound on an ear.
I find that highly unlikely.
It would have made an extremely loud supersonic ‘crack’ or ‘snap’ as it passed very close to his ear and may have caused some degree of temporary, possibly permanent hearing loss, but uh, no the air pressure differential almost certainly would not cause external bleeding.
You can cause blood vessels to burst if you put part of a human body in a significantly low (negative) pressure situation for a significant duration of time, but a .223 passing by would cause no where near the needed negative pressure, it would be for an astoundingly short period of time and finally such pressure differential situations usually cause internal bleeding which is sometimes visible due to the broken capillaries at the top layer of the skin, but this blood pools within the skin and does not break through its surface.
You would need something to actually contact and break the skin for the blood from those broken capillaries to leak outside of the body.
You’d be surprised, here’s an experiment shooting a bullet down the center of a tube made out of aluminum foil:
They don’t specify the caliber, but they do mention it’s going about 1,600fps which is about 1/2 the speed of an AR round.
If that were ear tissue instead of foil, it would get ripped up pretty good.
They say its a slug, meaning its out of a shotgun. They do not mention the gauge, but its safe to say basically any shot gun slug is significantly larger than a .223 round and thus has way, way more air displacement.
Also, they’re using aluminum foil, not human flesh or any kind of analog to it. Utterly, completely different and non analogous material, especially to ‘demonstrate’ what you are claiming it does.
Could a near miss from a .223 or a shotgun slug cause a pressure wave that temporarily makes a bit of your ear wiggle?
Sure, maybe a tiny bit.
Would this cause your ear to start externally bleeding?
No. To verify this, flick your upper ear, such that it moves by a centimeter.
Is your ear now bleeding externally?
Unless you broke the skin with your nail, no, it is not.
My fingertip isn’t going 1,600 feet per second or double that. :)
Not a surprise. Everything about the man is fake
I bet he even used a packet of Hunt’s ketchup.
Speaking for myself, my eyebrows are not raised. I remember reading that day that it was a shattered teleprompter or other shrapnel that nicked or sliced his ear, not that a bullet had passed through it. In any case, I personally don’t quite understand the importance of the distinction. He was shot at either way, no? If it were a nick by glass I imagine it would’ve healed by now.
Edit: I forgot to mention… Fuck Trump and his ilk, they deserve being two-time losers come November.
You might not understand the importance of the distinction, but Trump does in his messaging.
In an interview with The New York Post in the days after the shooting, Trump said that a bullet had hit him, taking a chunk out of his ear.
“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be dead.”
He’s touting this as an honest to God miracle that he survived. His followers have said God personally intervened to spare Trump, which strengthens their belief that he’s some sort of holy figure destined to rule. If it turns out that he was scratched by some shrapnel and not shot, that doesn’t sound nearly as divine-interventiony.
Yeah that gives a lot of context. He’s a pathological liar. Unfortunately, people attributing this to an act of God won’t be persuaded by any images or video showing that his ear is fully intact for whatever reason. They’ll assign it as another one of God’s miracles.
So he stood there in a hail of bullets so close he got hit by debris and you’re telling me it wasn’t an act of God?
Sorry, just giving you a preview of their answer. Having been shot at in my life, it doesn’t really matter. They’re going to call those bullets missing him a miracle. Especially because at 100 meters, he should be dead. He’s alive for only one of two reasons, that shooter fucked up or divine intervention.
I love the idea that an all powerful God would be like “sure I could stop this whole thing from happening in a million different ways, but I’m just gonna wait until the last possible microsecond and deflect the bullets into this firefighter instead.”
Sorry God was on her lunch break when the Secret Service did their pre game prayer circle.
Getting hit by a bullet makes it more dramatic and makes him more of a martyr for his rabid cult fans. If it didn’t hit him then there’s always the hint of the question - “was he the actual target?”. Which makes him less important to his fans.
Plus, although being shot at is pretty close to dying of course, a bullet grazing your head is exponentially closer to dying than it missing by several feet and some shrapnel or whatever gives you a little nick
It was just a mass shooting: you know, the thing that keeps happening in America that no one cares about…
Let’s see how much the make of it when it’s one of their self-selected elites injured by the gunman.
And let’s remind them it’s too early to speak about shootings. Let’s get some clarity and distance from this vigilante shooting over a crowd of people with an AR.
“was he the actual target?”
I mean he probably was, right?
Good point, I guess that gives me some justification for my stance that it isn’t important. I wouldn’t want to stoop to the level of his fans.
No one should be shot at, period. It’s the act of taking a bad thing (where someone did die) and embellish it for use for his advantage. If he had any shame…but…
FBI officially stated that it was a bullet, not shrapnel, after expressing initial uncertainty plus unhealthy 78 year olds heal slowly, hence the raised eyebrows.
Probably he was legit shot at - I think it’s irrational to believe it was staged with the evidence we currently have - but fascists love false-flag and staged attacks. Hitler’s Reichstag Fire, Putin’s Russian Appartment Bombings are two recent examples. Even Pisastratus, the 5thC BCE tyrant of Athens staged a fake attack on himself to generate sympathy and justify an armed guard which he then used to seize the acropolis.
So I can definitely see why eyebrows raise quickly when a would be tyrant is suspiciously unscathed.
The fact that trump wont release his medical records to anyone, or even allow the FBI to question him or see his ear, is all the proof you need that he didnt get shot.
We know trumps personality. If his ear really got shot by an actual bullet, He’d be ripping the bandage off at every fucking opportunity and pointing to it and screaming about what biden/the liberals/etc did to him.
“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the agency said in a statement.
They’re saying it could have been a fragment of a bullet, which would qualify as shrapnel. They’re not using that word.
Thank you! So the FBI is still saying it was shrapnel, they just stopped using the word shrapnel so trump can have his BS narrative. That’s healthy for our democracy.
speculation from last week by FBI director Christopher Wray about whether Trump’s ear was hit by a bullet or by shrapnel. The FBI later confirmed he was hit by a bullet.
But then you have to click ‘hit by a bullet’ to find out they’re using bullet as a euphemism for shrapnel.
they’re not using the word cause they don’t want to deal with the diaper baby having a tantrum at them, so they are caving to him.
Good point, interesting examples too, thanks.
It matters because he was wearing a giant bandage. Stop helping him by diffusing this.
Yeah this is pretty much the entire point.
Furthermore, denying it isn’t good politics. We’re not going to make his base disbelieve him and we’re going to look like conspiracy theorists to moderate Republicans and centrists unless we have extremely solid evidence.
Until we get that, he was shot, he has recovered. The ear and head area is famous for producing a lot of blood from very little. He was extremely lucky to only be grazed and we all renounce this kind of violence.
I hate to defend Trump, but as someone who a had cartilage piercing accidentally torn out, I can attest to the insane amounts of blood that can come from a rather small ear wound.
It wasn’t even an insane amount of blood in the pic I saw…
No, but it really could splatter all over his face from a very small cut.
You people are rather pathetic. I cannot imagine caring about this non story.
I do not care one fucking bit what the damage was and if you care, you are a worthless lemming.
and you people must love how that boot tastes.
So, I’ve had hangnails that left more of a wound and took longer to heal.
I wonder if diaper Donnie actually got merc’d that day and this is just a cheap clone from wish.com
I’m 2 decades younger than Trump, got into a bike accident over a year ago, taking a deep scrape on my shin, and I still have a scar.
Duh! One of the great benefits of skin suits is how easy they are to repair.
My eyebrows… they are indeed raised
Serious question: are we absolutely positive it was his blood?
Right after the assassination attempt there were joking references to Trump’s history with professional wrestling and the practice of “[blading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blading_(professional_wrestling\))”, ie, using a concealed razor to cut yourself during a fight in order to make it seem like you’d been injured. It was funny, but I didn’t think anyone was taking it seriously.
Now I’m genuinely starting to wonder. What the heck happened here? The odds of a bullet grazing just so exactly perfectly close to make him bleed, but not to produce any actual long-lasting damage, are lower than all kinds of other ridiculous ideas. I don’t even see any bruising in this photo. Elderly people often have a tendency to bruise quite easily.
Maybe Trump is just better at dodging bullets than Kennedy’s.
The Kennedys also had competent marksmen who weren’t rejected from a gun club because his shooting was so poor.
