Does a photo of former President Donald Trump with an uninjured right ear prove that the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt did not damage the ear permanently, as was claimed in a tweet? No, that's not true: The photo was taken September 17, 2022, almost two years before the injury. Multiple independent live telecasts showed Trump's ear was bandaged during his first public appearance after the assassination attempt.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on July 15, 2024. It read:
The top part of his ear grew back.
(Yes. This is from today)
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jul 16 13:10:21 2024 UTC)
In the photo of Trump in the X post, his right ear does not have a noticeable injury. The post does not provide any evidence that it was taken after the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt. In fact, the photo was from nearly two years before the shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania.
On July 13, 2024, Trump was the target of an assassination attempt in which the shooter's bullet "pierced the upper part of [his] right ear," he said in a post to the social media website Truth Social (archived here).
A reverse image search (archived here) of the photo in the post led Lead Stories to a July 15, 2024, article in The Jerusalem Post, which used the 2022 photo and clearly identified it as such. Beneath the headline was the same picture of Trump seen in the claim. The full picture included then-candidate for the U.S. Senate J.D. Vance, speaking at a podium. The Jerusalem Post captioned the image:
Former U.S. president Donald Trump listens as JD Vance speaks during a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, U.S., September 17, 2022.
Evidence of this can be seen below. Circling by Lead Stories:
(Source: The Jerusalem Post screenshot taken on Tue Jul 16 16:43:58 2024 UTC)
The photo, taken by a Reuters photojournalist, can be found in the Reuters photography files, where it is also dated September 17, 2022.
A similar claim was made in a post on X on July 15, 2024 (archived here). The photo in this X post is also from 2022, not 2024.
On July 15, 2024, Trump attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee with a bandage over his right ear. It was his first public appearance since the assassination attempt, according to NBC.
More Lead Stories fact checks on Donald Trump are here.
