- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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Updates:
Might be best for mods to lock this post at this point (is that a thing on Lemmy?) because this story is basically wrapped. The FBI says a bullet caused some ear damage. Maybe it was bullet shrapnel from a ricochet or something like that, but later photos show the teleprompters in-tact so it wasn’t shards of glass from those. Trump’s usage of the bandage (and the assassination attempt) as symbols and political tools has been discussed at length and I don’t think conspiratorial thinking beyond that is very productive. Pete Souza took his own account down after getting a lot of harassment, so no further conspiracies are needed regarding X-formerly-known-as-Twitter at this time.
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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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.
It matters because he was wearing a giant bandage. Stop helping him by diffusing this.
“Helping him” is a bit hyperbolic, no? What an enraging take to read. I feel like arguing over this as if it matters gives weight to the idiocy of people who idolize him. I even said I assumed he was hit by a teleprompter. Fuck you. Vote.
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.
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.
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.
“was he the actual target?”
I mean he probably was, right?
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 they 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 before we weigh in.
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.
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
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!
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.”
Looks like the MAGA threats pushed the photographer off “formerly Twitter.”
It’s also amazing to see the “fairness meter” down at the bottom of this Newsweek article, which appears to be some kind of user-submitted ranking. Its needle is currently slammed all the way over onto the “unfair left leaning” end of the gauge. How the heck is this “unfair”?
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
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.
That’s exactly what I heard, and haven’t heard anything to contradict it.
Not a surprise. Everything about the man is fake
I bet he even used a packet of Hunt’s ketchup.
I’ve seen a lot of spinals, dude… And this guy’s a fake. A fucking gold bricker.
Stay away from me, mister !
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.
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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.
deleted by creator
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.”
It must have barely nicked him. A hit where the entire cross sectional area of the bullet passed through the cartilage would have removed substantial material as well as possibly torn the ear completely. It’s not a bullet with a lot of mass, but it has a crapload of kinetic energy from velocity. Thin pieces of flesh are going to come apart with a direct hit.
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
It seemed weird from the get go. Nothing made sense.
Duh! One of the great benefits of skin suits is how easy they are to repair.
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.
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.
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)
He could have just kept wearing the bandage, if he wanted that.
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 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.
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…
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
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.
