- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
“was he the actual target?”
I mean he probably was, right?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Donald Trump photo without eyebrow bandage raises ears.
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
Couldn’t it just be a dumb and simple reason like : the picture is reversed and it’s showing the left ear ?
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 !
Also this whole thread is 48 hours old repost, there is like million other photos since then…
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
It’s bad journalistic practice to alter photos, period. Flipping horizontally is not allowed. Cropping, maybe. Complete flip? Negative.
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 its 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 !
That should be verifiable. Just check which side his flight’s exit ramp was on.
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.
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.
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…
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.
Because it will raise eyebrows
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.
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.
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Beep boop. This action was performed automatically. If you dont like me then please block me.💔
If you have any questions or comments about me, you can make a post to LW Support lemmy community.It seemed weird from the get go. Nothing made sense.
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!
Since his base is so evangelical, sometimes a bible quote is apt:
And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
- Revelations 13:3
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.”
