Donald Trump photo without ear bandage raises eyebrows
www.newsweek.com
Famous photographer Pete Souza has seemingly deleted his X account after a post doubting whether Trump was shot in the ear.

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.”

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    90·
    5 months ago

    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.

    • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
      58·
      5 months ago

      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.

    • jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      51·
      5 months ago

      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.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        34·
        5 months ago

        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.

        • CM400@lemmy.world
          21·
          5 months ago

          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?

          • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            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.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            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”

            • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.worldEnglish
              6·
              5 months ago

              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.

            • CM400@lemmy.world
              3·
              5 months ago

              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.

          • enkers@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            5 months ago

            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.

            • CM400@lemmy.world
              4·
              5 months ago

              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.

              • enkers@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                5 months ago

                Agreed, although he’s certainly been playing his injury up wearing that ear patch around, when it’s at most been a little scratch.

        • jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          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.

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        38·
        5 months ago

        There’s pictures of right after that show his ear…

        https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2024/07/14/USAT/74396917007-20240713-t-235354-z-1577583182-rc-2-mu-8-aisn-4-v-rtrmadp-3-usaelectiontrump.JPG?width=1320&height=882&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp

        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.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        5 months ago

        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.

      • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
        0·
        5 months ago

        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.

        • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
          0·
          5 months ago

          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.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
            1·
            5 months ago

            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.

            • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
              0·
              5 months ago

              You’d be surprised, here’s an experiment shooting a bullet down the center of a tube made out of aluminum foil:

              https://youtu.be/VXIUfMGEXX8

              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.

              • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
                1·
                5 months ago

                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.

    • warm@kbin.earth
      19·
      5 months ago

      It was just grazed and he might have had it covered with makeup, prosthetic or whatever since.

      The conspiracy is crazy.

    • PunnyName@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 months ago

      Some have stated it was shrapnel from the teleprompter being shattered and a chip of it scratching him.