Does a photo taken less than two weeks after Donald Trump's right ear was grazed in an assassination attempt show it undamaged? No, that's not true: The photo on social media predates the shooting by more than seven years. There's no evidence to suggest that the former president's ear has fully healed in less than two weeks since the July 13, 2024, shooting.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Threads on July 25, 2024, and opens with a string of goblin emojis (👺). The post's meme said:
Huge relief to see that President Trump's ear has grown back. I'm on holiday and have got mosquito bites that are taking longer to heal but I don't have a daily meeting with god.
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Fri July 26 14:45:05 2024 UTC)
The post provided no evidence to support its claim that Trump's ear was fully intact less than two weeks after it was grazed in a July 13, 2024, assassination attempt at a presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The photo
The photo used in the post was taken more than seven years before gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on Trump.
Lead Stories found the picture on the Getty Images website (archived here). It dates back to June 27, 2017, and is captioned, "President Donald Trump talks with new Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar during a telephone call in the Oval Office of the White House of the White House in Washington." The original image appears below:
(Source: Getty Images screenshot taken on Fri July 26 16:54:34 2024 UTC)
Read more
When this was written, USA Today (here and here), Full Fact, DW and Australian Associated Press had reviewed related but not identical claims.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims about the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on Donald Trump can be found here.
