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.”
Are we really going to propose baseless conspiracy theories about his ear? This shitty res photo proves nothing at all imo. This didn’t happen yesterday and no one on Lemmy has seen the wound clearly.
The only news here is that a photographer got banned for posting it
As the article mentioned, the photographer took down their own account.
Oh. I read an earlier article that didn’t mention that. Thanks
They reached out to Souza, but did not confirm that he deactivated it himself.
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.”
Although seeing as how Elon violated Twitters rules this week by posting AI political content, I wouldn’t put it past him to deactivate someone else’s account on their behalf.
True. Although Twitter is display the UI for a user initiated account deletion.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the MAGA threats started pouring into his DMs and he peaced out. Twitter is pretty toxic these days.
I agree it’s likely he deleted his own account. But you realize musk could just flip a bit on the account and it would say the same thing?
He posted on Instagram that he deactivated the account himself
I have so much more I want to say about the state of social media, but for now I want to make it clear that I was not kicked off Twitter. I kicked myself off.
You’re right. Thank you!
It does show that nothing is wrong with his ear that he would still need to wear an emotional support bandage.
The image I saw did not. Not nearly high res enough to tell.
There’s a zoomed in version of it and you still can’t see anything. Unless the image was flipped, which is definitely possible, he doesn’t need the bandage.
maybe you can link me to that? because this image does not convince me of anything… it’s pixelated af
So his hair is covering where I’d expect the damage to be, but I do think it appears there is some blemish or scab on the very edge of his hair. So, hard to say still.
I knew it! It was just ketchup from the hamberder in his pocket!
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
Hopefully this means mods start issuing apologies to people and restoring all the posts that questioned this to begin with, that they decried as baseless conspiracy theories.
What the fuck? “One person, known to be a prolific liar, might be lying about one particular currently unverifiable fact” literally can’t be a conspiracy theory, because it doesn’t involve a conspiracy; conspiracies, by definition, involve multiple people. Trump doesn’t need to tell his doctor to lie, because the doctor isn’t allowed to talk about it. Furthermore, Trump doesn’t need to tell his bodyguards anything either, because they are also not allowed to talk about it. Where’s the conspiracy? It’s not even particularly unlikely!
Has it been determined that he most likely was hit by a bullet vs. shrapnel?
The FBI said it was a bullet.
Not sure why this was downvoted. That’s what I heard too. FBI said it was a bullet or bullet fragment. They don’t seem to think it’s from something else like teleprompter glass. He probably just barely got hit with a tiny fragment.
There was an article 3/4 days ago in a debreif the FBI said they don’t believe it was a bullet and was most likely shrapnel but they didn’t confirm either.
If he wants to prove there’s a hole he should just get a gauge for it. They could make it gold with a diamond T in the middle
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.
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.
Because it will raise eyebrows
Are you insane? There is no way Trump would pass up that sort of imagery.
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.
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…
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)
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.
I’m skeptical of this photo. There’s no way Trump can handle stairs like that. Unless the photo was taken after one of his usual, “pause for 3 seconds after each step cuz this is just too much.”
Okay got it, newsweek is trash bait.
Duh! One of the great benefits of skin suits is how easy they are to repair.
Is it very stupid that Souza’s account was deleted for this picture?
Yes.
Is Trump a nonstop POS liar?
Also yes.
Is it possible Trump got astoundingly lucky, and the bullet just barely grazed the top of his earlobe, and this would cause the amount of blood seen, and basically just a superficial scratch?
Again, yes.
This kind of wound is typically called a ‘graze’. It is consistent with the trajectory the shooter was firing from and the direction Trump was facing.
There is another bandage pic of Trump with more localized bandaging which to me indicates the bullet likely just barely grazed the top rear ish of his upper earlobe:
Could it possibly have been caused by shrapnel or fragments of a teleprompter or some other object?
Yes, but, in the case of shattering teleprompter glass, shattered glass fragments are generally more rough and jagged surfaces than a spinning bullet, which on average would lead to an even more fucked up wound and more blood.
I keep hearing this claim that the teleprompter shattering was what actually caused the wound, despite the picture of what seems to literally be the bullet and it warping the air passing in an exact trajectory that would align with an astoundingly lucky and light graze.
Are there pictures, video, audio showing the teleprompter shattered, or being shattered?
A picture taken after the attempt showed that both teleprompters were in tact
The picture doesn’t give a 3D placement for the bullet, it doesn’t prove anything. We are seeing an x,y picture without any frame of reference for the z-axis. The trail tells us little due to the limitations of digital photography and the camera used.
The glass fragments are not more rough, that’s not really a good way to describe the two surfaces. The glass also would not have shattered, it would have ruptured. The two are different mechanical differences for what happened. The amount of kinetic energy in the glass fragments would have been very high.
The glass fragments would have been much sharper than the rounded bullet. It’s essentially 1,000 flying small knives bumping into each other.
Ear lobes are on the bottom
Ok, sure, the technical phrasing would be something like ‘a superficial grazing bullet wound to the exterior, superior portion of the helix of the right ear.’
That’s all fine. But also, Trump could and should just release the record of the medical visit. That would quiet a lot of this down. The outrage comes from the “oh my god I was shot with a bullet” and the “look how strong I am” vibe trump is giving off while also not releasing any real evidence aside from the footage of the day.
But I would suspect all of that to be intentional. A void of information creates a vacuum that fills with misinformation and speculation and that causes discourse which is all trump wants.
Oh yes, I completely agree with you that Trump should release the records of the hospital visit and cooperate with instead of needlessly antagonize investigators.
Unfortunately, he’s Trump, and as you say, he is probably at least somewhat cognizant that a vacuum of information has already lead to baseless speculation, and he certainly knows that in a chaotic miasma of people operating with entirely different ‘facts’, he can later stir the pot to his advantage.
Souza deleted his own account.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4798519-former-white-house-photographer-deletes-x-account/
Allegedly
Did you read his Instagram post linked in the article?
The photo could have been mirrored for stylistic purposes, but you’d think the photographer would have come out and said something by now.
Someone in another thread mentioned that it doesn’t appear to be mirrored judging by how Trump has his hair, it’s asymmetrical and stylized toward the left. Hence not mirrored.
Pete Souza posted on Instagram that he suspended his Twitter account himself. Apparently he was receiving a lot of hate (big surprise) and also drew fire inadvertently to the photographer of the photo
“Free speech is the most important thing… But if you call me out on my bullshit I’ll kill your fucking family”
-these people
There’s a frame showing both teleprompters intact after he was shot
Couldn’t it just be a dumb and simple reason like : the picture is reversed and it’s showing the left ear ?
The combover would be going the other direction then.
I’m pretty sure a press photographer from AP knows which way around a photo is.
Exactly, so I’m pretty sure a professional photographer knows which way to orient a photo to share their vision, when Eliott Erwin crops a picture of a dog with its owner, it’s not at random, there are deliberate choices made before publishing, the photographer could have taken a picture of the subject on their left side, and reversed the picture to show them walking towards the right to achieve whatever vision they had
welcome to real world, representative of generation z.
this is exactly why you should get your news from respectable news medium, not tiktok.
respectable medium has journalistic standards it adheres to, as opposed to just any random person on the internet, and it is goal is to pass (well, sell) the news, not “share their vision”.
sharing your vision is happening in opinion pieces, these are clearly marked as not to be confused with news segment (and you shouldn’t lie there as well).
https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-principles/telling-the-story/
PHOTO
We avoid the use of generic photos or video that could be mistaken for imagery photographed for the specific story at hand, or that could unfairly link people in the images to illicit activity. No element should be digitally altered except as described below.
Minor adjustments to photos are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, elimination of dust on camera sensors and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints and normal toning and color adjustments. These should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of “red eye” from photographs is not permissible.
Employees with questions about the use of such methods or the AP’s requirements and limitations on photo editing should contact a senior photo editor prior to the transmission of any image.
This sounds awfully condescending but still, thanks for all those details !
It’s bad journalistic practice to alter photos, period. Flipping horizontally is not allowed. Cropping, maybe. Complete flip? Negative.
Trump’s hair is always parted the same direction, from Trump’s right to Trump’s left.
Trump has an asymmetrical hair-style, making it 100% sure that this is a picture of the correct ear.
Good catch thank you !
That should be verifiable. Just check which side his flight’s exit ramp was on.
I’ve seen a lot of spinals, dude… And this guy’s a fake. A fucking gold bricker.
Stay away from me, mister !
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.
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…
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.
More than likely it was a slight nick / graze. Not actual full on ear contact.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Adorable grocers
Civil war
Lol
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. :)
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?
Some have stated it was shrapnel from the teleprompter being shattered and a chip of it scratching him.
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.
