Trump's right ear does not look like a gunshot wound - GS: "A full public assessment of Trump’s injuries is necessary, for both the former president’s own health and the clarity it can provide for voters... It’s not even clear that he was struck by a primary projectile from the rifle, a secondary projectile or a combination of both. Sometimes, it can be difficult to know without an in-depth evaluation."
-"A full public assessment of Trump’s injuries is necessary, for both the former president’s own health and the clarity it can provide for voters... It’s not even clear that he was struck by a primary projectile from the rifle, a secondary projectile or a combination of both.… pic.twitter.com/rlHOQYFAKx
— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) July 19, 2024
It’s been five days since gunfire erupted at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, resulting in an injury to the former president, the death of one attendee, Corey Comperatore, and severe injuries to two others.
And although the images we’ve seen of Trump since his attempted assassination have been those of a person who was barely injured and is now in high spirits, what we’ve been told by the campaign offers very little insight into the former president’s condition, what kind of care he received or how his medical team will monitor him in the days and weeks ahead.
A full public assessment of Trump’s injuries is necessary, for both the former president’s own health and the clarity it can provide for voters about the recovery of the man who could become president of the United States once again. The concern is that gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma. As a trauma neurosurgeon, I have seen how a thorough evaluation after any kind of gunshot wound can provide a complete picture and lead to a speedier recovery.
The first official communication about Trump’s health from his campaign came about 40 minutes after the shooting. It simply said Trump was “fine” and was “being checked out at a local medical facility.” It added that more details would follow.
However, the only other official details came about two hours later, in a post by Trump himself on Truth Social, where he wrote: “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin.”
Beyond that, most of what we know about his injury is based on what we’ve seen in pictures and video, and from secondhand accounts.
A source familiar with the matter told CNN on Sunday that Trump underwent a number of “routine” tests at the hospital, including a CT scan that came back normal.
CNN has repeatedly reached out to the Trump campaign and Butler Memorial Hospital, where Trump was treated, for more information but has not received further details about his condition or care. CNN reached out to the Trump campaign for comment again Thursday.
In the moments immediately following the sounds of gunfire on Saturday, we saw Trump raise his right hand to his ear and the side of his face. He did not collapse but seemed to duck to the ground of his own accord.
With US Secret Service surrounding him, he stood up about a minute later, raised his right arm and was able to walk and speak immediately. We saw him rouse the audience, telling them to “Fight!” as he pumped his fist in the air. From a medical standpoint, these are all very good signs and, despite the visible blood on his face, provided evidence that he wasn’t severely injured.
US Rep. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former White House physician, said during an interview Monday on “The Benny Show” podcast, that he “checked out” the wound to Trump’s ear and bandaged it himself. He added that “there was no concussive effect from the bullet” because it was far enough from Trump’s head.
“It just took the top of his ear off, a little bit of the top of his ear off, as it passed through,” Jackson said. “It was bleeding like crazy.”
Trump was transported to nearby Butler Memorial Hospital. Dr. David Rottinghaus, an emergency room physician there, said the hospital had been in contact with the Secret Service before Saturday’s rally. Rottinghaus, who did not treat Trump himself and would not comment on Trump’s treatment or condition, said he came to the hospital shortly after the shooting to help triage patients.
“We do prepare for incidents like this. We had had advanced visits in the past for rallies when Mr. Trump was here. The last was the end of 2020. We have worked with the Secret Service in the past and local and federal law enforcement to come up with plans about if an incident like this happened,” Rottinghaus told CNN.
Those plans included designating a bed in the ER in case it was needed, having clinical teams at the rally itself to treat patients on-site for minor medical issues, and avoiding overwhelming the hospital if there were a crisis.
When the unthinkable happened, Rottinghaus said, it took just minutes for Butler Memorial to put its plan into action, locking down the hospital and diverting patients to other health care facilities.
Although we were told that Trump had a CT scan and other routine exams, it is not clear when these tests were performed, who read the scans or whether his brain specifically was examined.
In the Monday interview, Jackson said Trump’s injury was “dressed up. He’ll be OK. … It’s going to granulate and heal in, and he’s not going to need anything to be done with it.”
On Wednesday, in an interview with CBS News, Eric Trump said that his father had “no stitches but certainly, certainly a nice flesh wound.”
And Trump has been moving around the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, talking and smiling through speeches with a bandage on his ear.
All of this points to a favorable prognosis. But it is still surprising that we have not heard more about the exact diagnosis and care of what may have been a catastrophic injury. And, while all the attention has been on his ear and right side of his head, that doesn’t mean other injuries may not be present. It’s not even clear that he was struck by a primary projectile from the rifle, a secondary projectile or a combination of both. Sometimes, it can be difficult to know without an in-depth evaluation.
We do know that the shooter used an AR-15-style weapon, and in my experience in the operating room, I’ve witnessed the kind of trauma this weapon can cause. The kinetic energy of it is significant: A rifle like the AR-15 can produce up to 1,300 foot-pounds of force. With that much power close to the head, there can be injuries beyond what’s visible.
For example, a fracture to the thin bone in that region of the skull, an epidural hematoma (or bleeding between the skull and the brain) and damage to the bones of the inner ear, which can result in hearing loss, vertigo or dizziness.
A CT scan can usually detect such injuries, but they aren’t always immediately apparent. As a result, sometimes patients are observed in the hospital and may even undergo a repeat CT scan.
The stress from a shooting can also have psychological effects.
“In the chaos that immediately follows being shot, these psychological impacts don’t always manifest,” said Dr. Kenji Inaba, a trauma surgeon with the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “It can come up later on, and it’s something that we always need to be acutely aware of.”
The good news is that most physical symptoms of an injury would probably have revealed themselves over the past few days. At this point, however, the Trump campaign hasn’t yet shared whether a full workup was done at the time or if there has been any follow-up since.
Presidents and presidential candidates are not required to share their medical histories with the public, but voters have said that the health conditions of their leaders matter to them in this election. More information helps everyone make better decisions.
Rottinghaus, the Butler Memorial physician, told CNN that after all the preparation for the unthinkable, “the unexpected happened” on Saturday. Still, the hospital considers it a successful day: Staff juggled the arrival of a former president with care for their other patients. What made it work, he said, was communication, clear planning and preparation to act.
In an intense political season for the country, that kind of collaboration and communication may be a lesson for the candidates, too.
CNN’s Nadia Kounang, Deidre McPhillips, Maya Davis and Jamie Gumbrecht contributed to this report.
Donald Trump's former White House physician said that there was "no concussive effect" from the bullet that grazed the former president's right ear during the assassination attempt at a campaign rally on Saturday.
Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, who served as Trump's doctor during the former president's term in the Oval Office, spoke with conservative podcast host Benny Johnson on Monday before the start of the Republican National Convention (RNC), where Trump was formally nominated as the GOP's pick for the 2024 presidential election.
The convention has arrived in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, over the weekend. The gunman, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, shot several rounds from a .22 caliber-fitted AR-15-style weapon at the former president. Crooks grazed Trump's ear in the shooting. One rally- goer was killed and two others were injured. The assailant was shot dead by Secret Service counter-snipers soon after firing at Trump.
Jackson said Monday that he checked out Trump's ear the morning before the first day of the RNC, adding that the bullet "just took the top of his ear off" as it whizzed past the former president. Trump was seen with a large bandage over his ear during the convention on Monday.
"He was lucky," Jackson said on The Benny Show. "I mean, it was far enough away from his head that there was no concussive effect from the bullet, and it just took the top of his ear off."
Jackson added that the wound was "bleeding like crazy" when he checked in on the former president Monday morning but that Trump "will be OK" and that the injury would "granulate" and "heal in." Granulation is the process of new connective tissue forming on the surface of a wound while it heals.
Johnson also asked the physician if Trump would have "a bite out of his ear for the rest of his life." Jackson responded that the wound "is not going to be that noticeable" when healed.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign via email for further comment Tuesday afternoon.
Jackson added during his discussion with Johnson that he believes "divine intervention" played a role in keeping Trump from being further hurt in the shooting. The former president has previously said that his life was spared because he moved his head at "the exact right time" to pivot toward a chart that he was speaking about during the rally.
"He [Trump] realizes how close he came to that," Jackson said. "And he realizes that if he hadn't started making that movement where he turned his head, pulled back a little bit and looked up, if he hadn't done it at the exact millisecond that he started, that bullet would have entered his head."
"I think there was divine intervention there," the congressman added.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Four days after former president Donald Trump was shot in the ear at a rally in Pennsylvania, his medical team has yet to release detailed records of his condition or treatment. And while his campaign has pronounced him to be in good health, numerous experts on gunshot trauma and emergency medicine interviewed by STAT said there could still be outstanding questions.
All emphasized that they could not comment specifically about Trump’s injury, having not examined him themselves, and added that it did appear that the injury was minor. But they also said that in cases like Trump’s, it would be important to rule out any injury to the brain or neck.
“It may appear like only a graze to Trump’s ear, but a ballistic injury that close to the head/brain isn’t trivial,” Baylor University Medical Center emergency physician Amy Faith Ho posted on X shortly after the shooting on July 13.
Here’s how experts said they would respond to injuries like Trump’s — and their thoughts on the lingering questions that have not been publicly addressed.
How emergency doctors approach gunshot wounds like Trump’s
In an interview with STAT, Ho elaborated on how gunshot wounds close to the head are typically treated. “Initially, our concern would be things like brain bleeds, arterial bleeds, or other vascular injuries, like something called a dissection. We would also be concerned about bony injuries, so fractures and specifically a skull fracture or a cervical spine fracture if it hit the neck.”
“Besides the obvious inner and external ear injuries possible, the force of ballistics at that proximity make both skull fractures and head bleeds a very real risk,” Ho said. Injuries of this kind would require CT scans of the head and the neck, allowing evaluation of the arteries in both, Ho said. She said she’d also check for hearing loss, vertigo, and dizziness.
Nicholas Namias, chief of the division of trauma and acute care surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, also noted that the biggest concern with gunshot wounds close to the head is always a brain injury.
“These weapons are very high velocity, and you actually can get a brain injury with what looks like a graze, without even a fracture to the skull,” Namias said.
Following initial treatment of the local wound and a CT scan to detect potential brain damage, Namias added that he would refer the patient for psychological testing.
“Most people don’t have it filmed,” Namias said of traumatic events like this. “He can see it over and over and over, so this has got to be harrowing and so you would screen someone like that for post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Any gunshot wound to the head is treated seriously, said Matthew Mostofi, associate chief of emergency medicine at Tufts Medical Center.
Most gunshot victims, he said, are rapidly assessed to make sure their airway is open, their neck is stabilized, and that they are breathing. “A quick way to do this is to ask their name. If they say, ‘My name is Donald,’ you say, ‘Great, you’re breathing.’”
“Then we examine you,” he said. “We’d look at the ear last.”
Mostofi emphasized that he could not diagnose Trump from a distance but said that the information he had heard suggested Trump had only sustained an injury to the pinna, or outer ear. “That’s not a life-threatening injury,” he said.
Ear injuries do have specific potential complications that Trump’s medical team would likely be on the lookout for, according to Mostofi, such as “cauliflower ear” — a malady often seen in wrestlers that occurs when the skin and cartilage of the ear become separated by a hematoma and the cartilage does not receive enough oxygen as the wound heals. One remedy is to use a pressure bandage after the injury to make sure the skin and cartilage stay in contact.
“The ear is an interesting little appendage,” he said. “It’s skin over cartilage and there’s not a lot of blood supply.”
He also said perichondritis — an infection of the ear cartilage — remained a risk and could be more serious than infection of the skin.
Mostofi said patients who had fallen or experienced tenderness in their neck would be sent for further imaging to rule out issues to the head, neck, or spine, especially if they were older, but said “if you hadn’t fallen or had any tenderness we might not do any imaging.” He said he did not think concussion was a potential issue because the bullet had been fired from so far away. While “barotrauma,” or damage to the eardrum by a pressure change when a gun is fired in a closed car, can be a risk, that was not the case here.
Kenji Inaba, a professor and vice chair of surgery at Keck Medicine of USC and chief of trauma and surgical critical care there, also said there was a low likelihood of brain injury or hearing loss from a ballistic injury to the outer ear, but that close examination was important to look for errant bullet fragments or anything that may have hit the ear and continued into the face or brain.
“When we’re talking about ballistic injuries or gunshot injuries, we want to make sure we discuss all the potential injuries,” said Inaba, who is also the medical director for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Inaba said the apparent minimal nature of a gunshot injury that could have been far worse was something he sees often in his own trauma center. “We see this all the time, where the head or the body happens to be in a particular space completely impacts the consequences of that bullet,” he said.
Open questions about Trump’s injury
So far, there has been no release of official medical reports from those who treated Trump and no release of test results or imaging following the shooting. What is known is that after the shooting early Saturday evening, Trump was taken to Butler Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania, where staff treated his injuries. He was released the same day within a few hours. Trump said Saturday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he had been “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
The most detailed medical information yet has come from Trump’s former White House doctor, Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, who said he examined Trump shortly before the start of the Republican National Convention and said on a podcast that the bullet had taken off a chunk of Trump’s ear.
“He was lucky,” Jackson said on The Benny Show. “I mean, it was far enough away from his head that there was no concussive effect from the bullet, and it just took the top of his ear off.” Jackson said Trump’s wound was initially bleeding heavily but that he “will be OK.”
Jackson told The New York Times he had changed the bandage on Trump’s ear and that it was large “because you need a bit of absorbent” and “you don’t want to be walking around with bloody gauze.”
Trump told Jackson that had he not pulled his head back just a microsecond before the shooting to gesture toward a graphic behind him, “that bullet would have entered his head,” according to Jackson. He added that Trump told him: “That chart that I was going over saved my life.”
Trump’s son Eric told CBS News this morning that his father did not receive stitches but “had a nice flesh wound” and was doing well.
In the aftermath of the attempted assassination, more detailed information from official medical sources has yet to be released — a cause of concern for some observers.
Nick Mark, an intensivist in Seattle, said that he was frustrated more information was not being released or reported by the media.
“Did he have a head CT? What did it show? Did he have stitches? Tetanus shot?,” Mark asked Tuesday in a post on X.
Speaking with STAT, Mark said that he didn’t want to fearmonger and that the wound could be minimal. That said, “I’d want to know as a doctor that the person running for the highest office hasn’t been cognitively impaired by a high velocity bullet.”
“There’s been so much attention rightfully given to President Biden’s health, and almost nothing about this,” Mark said. “It’s frustrating.”
Steven Beschloss, who wrote a book about presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, said he was concerned about the information vacuum surrounding the shooting. “I find it stunning Trump is the only source—did a bullet hit him, graze him, or was it something else,” he posted.
“It’s been three days going on four since this horrific event occurred […] yet we have not received a medical report from the hospital nor have we received a medical report from the campaign or the Trump organization about the damage to his ear,” said former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele in an interview with MSNBC. “There are a lot of questions about that ear.”
The consensus, however, is that Trump got lucky.
“It certainly would seem former President Trump should make a full recovery,” said Thomas Scalea, the physician-in-chief of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “In terms of his ability to function and recover, it seems it won’t be a problem.”
Scalea said his thoughts went beyond the medical issues involved. “The real story to me is you can’t run for president without someone trying to kill you,” he said.
“It was close — three or four inches away and this is a completely different story,” he said. “It’s a matter of inches.”
CLAIM: A photo taken on Monday shows former President Donald Trump with no damage to his right ear, contrary to reports that it was injured in an attempted assassination on Saturday.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The photo was taken on Sept. 17, 2022, at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, for then-U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance. Trump appeared at the Republican National Convention Monday night with a large, white bandage on his right ear. Myriad photos show his ear bloodied after a shooter opened fire at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, over the weekend.
THE FACTS: Social media users are sharing the old photo as new, with some falsely presenting it as evidence that Trump was not injured by the gunfire.
“The top part of his ear grew back,” reads one X post from Monday night that had received approximately 40,000 likes and 13,200 shares as of Tuesday. “(Yes. This is from today)”
Another X post from Monday night states: “This image of Trump was taken today. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his ear, and it has zero damage, FROM A BULLET. Everything about Trump is a con or a grift.” It received approximately 26,000 likes and 8,600 shares.
But the photo was taken nearly two years ago.
It is from a Sept. 17, 2022, rally in Youngstown, Ohio, for Vance during his Senate campaign. The image appeared in multiple articles published around that time. Trump chose Vance, now a U.S. senator, as his running mate on Monday.
The version spreading online is cropped to show only Trump and is zoomed in to show the former president’s ear more clearly. In the original, Vance can be seen speaking at a podium while Trump stands behind him.
Trump appeared at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday night with a large, white bandage on his right ear. Numerous photos from the aftermath of the shooting show the same ear bloodied.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing-home employee from suburban Pittsburgh, fired multiple shots at Trump with an AR-style rifle from a nearby roof at a rally for the Republican nominee on Saturday. He was killed by Secret Service personnel, officials said.
The attempted assassination left Trump and two other men wounded. Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old fire chief, was killed while protecting his family. The FBI said it was investigating the attack as a potential act of domestic terrorism, but has not identified a clear ideological motive, The Associated Press has reported.___
This is part of the AP’s effort to address widely shared false and misleading information that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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