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.”

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
    2·
    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
      3·
      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.