Fabricated Trump post claims he lost 'whole ear' in shooting | Fact check

Joedy McCreary, USA TODAY
·3 min read
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The claim: Image shows Trump post claiming rally shooting ‘took my entire ear off’

A July 20 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be a post on X, formerly Twitter, from former President Donald Trump that includes increasingly outlandish claims about the shooting at his rally that left him with an injured right ear.

“It took my entire ear off,” begins the text of the purported post. “The whole ear.”

It ends with an assertion that he is "the best at regrowing ears."

Similar versions of the image and the claim were shared hundreds of times on Facebook, on Instagram and on X.

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Fact check roundup: False claims about Trump rally shooting spread online

Our rating: Altered

Trump did not share the post. The image is a fabrication created by a social media user who identified it as satire, but many reposts give no indication of its satirical origin.

Fabricated post originated as satire

The shooting at Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killed one person, critically injured two more and left the former president with a wounded ear. He wore a bandage over the ear during his appearances the next week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

But the purported post from Trump is a fabrication. There is no record of the post on his verified X profile. He has made only one post on the platform since January 2021: He shared the mugshot from his Georgia election case in an Aug. 24, 2023, post.

In a Truth Social post shortly after the shooting, Trump said he "heard a whizzing sound" and a bullet "pierced the upper part of my right ear." He provided a similar description during his RNC speech. But at no point did he claim to have lost his ear.

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The image in question originated in a July 20 post on X from an account that in several subsequent posts made clear it is a fabrication and was shared as satire.

The fabricated post goes on to claim that Trump said his unidentified doctor told him, “Nobody is healthier than you,” and that he was “regrowing” the ear. While neither of those things happened, Trump did release a letter from Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, his political ally and medical provider. According to news reports about the letter, Jackson wrote that he has been treating the 2-centimeter wound to Trump’s right ear, saying it was the result of a gunshot with the bullet coming less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head.

The social media posts are examples of what could be called "stolen satire," where claims written as satire and presented that way originally are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the later posts are misled, as was the case here.

The shooting at the rally has spawned a significant amount of misinformation. USA TODAY has previously debunked false claims that an image shows Trump playing golf after the assassination attempt, that a separate image shows a bullet hole in Trump’s suit jacket and that a video shows the gunman previously shouting, “Slash Republican throats.”

USA TODAY reached out to several social media users who shared the image. None who responded provided evidence to support the claim.

PolitiFact also debunked a version of the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fabricated post claims Trump lost 'whole ear' in shooting | Fact check

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