Claim: Pictures of Donald Trump at a public event show him with an undamaged ear, days after an assassination attempt on the Republican leader.
Fact: The images predate the assassination attempt in which he was injured in the ear; therefore, the claim is false.
On 16 July 2024, X (formerly Twitter) user @pollyollydoodle posted (archive) a picture of Donald Trump, a Republican leader who served as the head of state from 2017 to 2021 and is now running for a second, non-consecutive term in the upcoming November 2024 elections. It was shared alongside the following caption:
“This is Trump today at the RNC convention. Eric Trump said half his ear is gone. That was a lie. If a bullet from an AR-15 grazed his ear it would look worse than this. I’m not saying he wasn’t hit by something (glass?). Show us the medical report.”
A different image (archive) of Trump with the same claim also went viral on X, with the caption stating, “The top part of his ear grew back. (Yes. This is from today)”.
Assassination attempt
The X post, which has garnered over 141,100 views as of writing time, came a few days after the former US president survived an apparent assassination attempt when gunshots were fired at his campaign rally in Butler, a city in Pennsylvania.
Trump “put his hand to right ear and ducked after the first of several pops” as “Secret Service agents surrounded him and rushed him off the stage, his face streaked with what appeared to be blood”, The Washington Post reported (archive).
According to the publication, the shooter, who was killed right after, was identified (archive) as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The attack left one person dead while two others were critically injured, it added.
In a post (archive) on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump thanked the US Secret Service and other law enforcement officers. He also extended condolences to the family of the man killed during the shooting. While describing the incident, he wrote that he “was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear”.
Trump has publicly appeared wearing a white rectangular bandage — his followers later wore similar dressings in solidarity — and his team released an update on his condition as well.
The bullet came in “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head, and struck the top of his right ear”, US Representative Ronny Jackson, who has in the past served as Trump’s White House physician, said in the update posted on X.
“The bullet track produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear. There was initially significant bleeding, followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear. The swelling has since resolved, and the wound is beginning to granulate and heal properly. Based on the highly vascular nature of the ear, there is still intermittent bleeding requiring a dressing to be in place. Given the broad and blunt nature of the wound itself, no sutures were required,” he wrote.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image and found a similar one — showing Trump in a slightly different posture, with his now-running mate JD Vance, a US senator from Ohio — in a 27 June 2024 article on MSN and sourced from The Daily Digest. This confirmed that the picture predates the assassination attempt, which took place on 13 July.
An article by RBC-Ukraine carrying the same picture credited it to Getty Images, so we searched the American photo agency’s website for “Donald Trump and JD Vance”. This led us to multiple leads, with this one matching the one in the viral claim.
Dated 7 November 2022, the photo is captioned, “JD Vance, co-founder of Narya Capital Management LLC and US Republican Senate candidate for Ohio, right, talks on stage with former US President Donald Trump during a ‘Save America’ rally in Vandalia, Ohio, US, on Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. Former President Donald Trump suggested an announcement that he plans to make another White House bid is imminent and attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at a rally in Pennsylvania, a sign the former president is training his ire on a potential chief rival in a 2024 GOP primary. Photographer: Joshua A. Bickel/Bloomberg via Getty Images.”
To find the origin of the image in the second claim, we used the same search term on Getty Images and found two similar photos — here and here — featuring Trump, in the back, and Vance speaking from a podium. They are accompanied by the following caption:
“YOUNGSTOWN, OH – SEPTEMBER 17: Republican Senate candidate JD Vance and former President Donald Trump speak at a Save America Rally to support Republican candidates running for state and federal offices in the state at the Covelli Centre during on September 17, 2022 in Youngstown, Ohio. Republican Senate candidate JD Vance and Rep. Jim Jordan(R-OH) spoke to supporters along with Former President Trump.(Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images).”
However, while both of the above show a slightly blurred image of Trump’s face, we found an exact match in other news articles, such as The Guardian and Sky News. Both publications credited the image to Reuters and dated it for the year 2022.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the images shared with the false claim here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
It was also posted on Facebook here, here, here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The images showing Trump with an undamaged ear predate the assassination attempt. Therefore, the claim is false.
Background image in cover photo: @DonaldTrump
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