- 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.”
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.
In case it gets taken down completely:
There have been re-creations on YouTube with ballistics gel and pig ears showing what happens to an ear shot by an AR-15 round, I’m not going to lay judgement, just watch the video:
Ballistics gel (language):
https://youtu.be/FsvJzfXZI18#t=6m59s
Pig ears:
https://youtu.be/zfATfPIpDc4#t=4m19s
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My fingertip isn’t going 1,600 feet per second or double that. :)
…
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.
What kills me are the states that ban bottleneck cartridges for hunting. Shotguns only. They’re only now coming around and allowing straight walled cartridges.
https://www.remington.com/big-green-blog/what-states-can-you-hunt-with-a-straight-all-cartridge.html
Just saw this and read up a bit. What in the world is the reasoning here?
The feeling is that bottleneck cartridges might have too much penetration and range.
You do realize you can get an AR in 22LR, 9MM, 5.56 NATO etc… right?
Just saw your reply. Yep, I’m aware. I often change the bolt in my AR so I can shoot .22LR.
But we’re discussing what this guy used, not all the myriad options.
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.
As an excited elderly person on blood thinners, I absolutely get that. “Hey! Where’d all this blood come from! Oh, wait!”
My dad carried one of those little tubes of super glue…
Bandaids were a waste of time, if he got a cut on his hand he’d just immediately glue it shut.
Bro… my grandmother super glued her earlobe when something caught her earring and literally ripped off of her ear. At that moment, I realized my grandmother was a bad ass woman.
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.
More than likely it was a slight nick / graze. Not actual full on ear contact.
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.
You’re missing the point.
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?
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”
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.
We could talk about if JD fucked a couch if you want…