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."
Are we really going to propose baseless conspiracy theories about his ear? This shitty res photo proves nothing at all imo. This didn't happen yesterday and no one on Lemmy has seen the wound clearly.
The only news here is that a photographer got banned for posting it
As the article mentioned, the photographer took down their own account.
They reached out to Souza, but did not confirm that he deactivated it himself.
Although seeing as how Elon violated Twitters rules this week by posting AI political content, I wouldn't put it past him to deactivate someone else's account on their behalf.
He posted on Instagram that he deactivated the account himself
You're right. Thank you!
True. Although Twitter is display the UI for a user initiated account deletion.
I wouldn’t be shocked if the MAGA threats started pouring into his DMs and he peaced out. Twitter is pretty toxic these days.
I agree it’s likely he deleted his own account. But you realize musk could just flip a bit on the account and it would say the same thing?
Oh. I read an earlier article that didn't mention that. Thanks
It does show that nothing is wrong with his ear that he would still need to wear an emotional support bandage.
The image I saw did not. Not nearly high res enough to tell.
There’s a zoomed in version of it and you still can’t see anything. Unless the image was flipped, which is definitely possible, he doesn’t need the bandage.
maybe you can link me to that? because this image does not convince me of anything... it's pixelated af
So his hair is covering where I'd expect the damage to be, but I do think it appears there is some blemish or scab on the very edge of his hair. So, hard to say still.