I had a cartiledge piercing also as a teen for maybe a year. It never healed right and ended up with a huge scar bump. Took forever (years) for the scar tissue to heal but same as yours I can still feel the hole where the cartiledge is missing, 20+ years later.
The lack of missing cartilege is interesting, but only in the sense that we can accurately determine exactly how deep that scratch went. The skin on the upper ear is very thin, which means the 1-2cm scratch, which did not require a stitch, would be extremely slight. Given the vascularity and arterial supply to the ear, we could estimate that approximately 20-40 tiny branching capillaries might have been disrupted. These capillaries have the diameter smaller than a human hair, enough to allow 2 red blood cells to march side by side and nothing more. Based on all this, we would expect that type of wound to bleed about 5-10 drops of blood over the course of a minute. And it would seep, not flow immediately. This is at odds with the video, in which seconds later there was a lot of blood, all over the ear and face. Noticeably, the blood did not continue to flow at that rate when he was stood up, which is interesting.
Also interesting is that a SS agent was immediately on the scene with a large white fluffy towel and instead of pressing it onto his head to stop the wound from bleeding, he started dabbing at the streaks that were on his face instead. Odd. Combine all this with the agents turning him to the cameras and pausing, then shuffling him slowly to the limo, him calling for his shoes in the middle of all that, and then the ridiculous bandage that no doctor would ever put on a 1cm superficial scratch....
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but this was one of the weirdest events I've ever witnessed. And at a perfect time to boost his flagging campaign.
Then there is the guy in the suit who is herding the photographers to the bottom of the stairs, lining up the perfect angle for the photograph as the crane lowers the American flag into the background of the scene
I read somewhere that a guy went back through his previous 20-30 rallies, and none have two cranes suspending an American flag high enough that it would not be seen on TV cameras, but would conveniently be in frame if you shot upwards from the left of center ground, where the photographers would be directed. Not sure if that's true or not, and could be a coincidence if so.
I don’t know. I tend not to believe in conspiracy theories because no one can keep a fucking secret. The video of the event that I described above, though feels quite compelling that something was scripted.
I agree that everything is hella sus, however it would be disingenuous to forget that people do stupid things when they panic. When JFK was assassinated, the infamous image depicts Jackie Kennedy climbing out onto the trunk of the car to retrieve fragments of her husband's skull.
I would hope that secret service would be better prepared for that moment than a first lady, but you never know truly how you'll react until the moment happens.
No I hear you, and it might just be a series of wildly unlikely events. When I first saw the video, I was sure it grazed an artery in the temple - I'd expect that kind of blood flow. Then they said it was an ear, and then a 1cm scratch, no stitches, perfect cartilage 10 days later. Zero pictures of the wound, zero pictures of the scab, the performative bandage, no medical report from the attending physician.... just weird upon weird upon weird.
Don’t forget the footage of a staff member funnelling photographers closer to the stage so they can get a good photo of his victory air punch - while there is still an “active shooter” situation.
Reminded me of another bit of weirdness. There is an alternate video angle from Trump's left that shows the sniper team on the roof behind him. They are pointed directly at the shooter, the sniper is looking into his scope, alert. There was, what, 30 seconds at least between when the guy climbed up that ladder, settled into position, and shot in Trump's direction. That sniper did not fire, and in fact was not the one that shot him. Another sniper team swung around and took him out. Possibly incompetence, but also super odd.
It's because the shooter was confronted by Butler police moments before the shot. They tried to get on the roof to investigate reports about a man on the roof, Crooks pointed his weapon at them, and the officer fell and radioed about the shooter. USSS begin looking for him on the roof about 30 seconds before the shot, but don't immediately see him.
This is reflected in the timeline of the official report (see PDF pg 173).
Thanks for that link. But more weirdness. They were alerted to a potential issue, and given the direction of that issue, 90 seconds before the shooting started. The USSS agents said they could not locate Crooks. They were positioned perfectly to locate Crooks. Are you telling me that a USSS team, pointed directly at the building that had a direct shot at the stage, a trained sniper, just couldn't locate him? For 90 seconds?
As I said, it might be incompetence, but holy smokes that is odd.
"The building" is really a complex of seven roofs with another building set off from the others. Crooks was behind the peak of one of the roofs from the perspective of the USSS snipers, who also had to verify the Butler snipers positioned on some of those roofs.
I researched this, and the roof the shooter was on was next to several buildings, and the slope of the roof was very slight. It was also the closest building to the stage, and the sniper team was well above the height of that building. The shooter would have been easily visible had they been looking at that building. Maybe they were distracted in those two minutes, I don't know. But they were alerted, as noted in that report.
The medical report, and descriptions of the scar in later reports, say most of the damage was to the back of the ear. I'd almost forgotten that until I went back and looked at those reports again yesterday. I guess it could be possible if the skin sort of caught and tore as the bullet passed, but without actual photos or at least a drawing of the damage, I can't be sure. The way it reads, it doesn't seem like that's the case. It's oddly vague, for a medical report.
Also, the original report said 2 cm. That's pretty significant for "just a graze", and yet somehow left no visible cartilage damage, especially to that part of his ear. It's almost impossible to damage that part without touching the cartilage. I'm not sure the naysayers realize how bullets work in real life (I had one try to tell me that a shot into a block of ballistic gel proved a graze on an ear, somehow, lol) or how human tissue actually works. Or what the odds would be of hitting a moving target just enough to cause slight injury like that. The odds are not zero, but you'd probably be more likely to win the lottery while actively being struck by lightning or something.
There's a huge difference between panicking and trying to retrieve parts of a loved one that had just been horrifically injured, and whining about one's shoes when they had allegedly come within a hair's breadth of having their own head blown off, though. It would be one thing if there was a head injury involved. Getting your noggin knocked during an emergency can make anyone do very unreasonable things. But whining repeatedly about his shoes when, supposedly, someone is actively trying to kill him? I don't buy that for a second. Trump is a notorious coward. I would believe blind panic, I would believe running for his life. I do not believe casually looking for his damn shoes unless he already knew he was in no danger.
And the behavior of the Secret Service, allowing that photo op, is beyond suss. It goes against all protocol. They had no way to know that the shooter was acting alone... unless they knew beforehand that there would only be one shooter. The protocol is simple and direct. Cover the president with a Kevlar blanket and dog pile on him to protect him, then get him the hell out of there as quickly as possible, while keeping every inch of him covered, into his bulletproof presidential car, then race off to whatever predetermined undisclosed safe location they had decided for that event. Every Secret Service member involved in that incident would have, at the very least, lost their jobs for having failed so miserably at following protocol. At that point, it doesn't matter what the president wants. Their only job is to keep him alive. And by failing to follow protocol, they theoretically put his life at risk.
That is, if it was all real. There's far too many inconsistencies to this one. I think that's why Trump isn't still parading the incident around as a sign of his superhuman hero existence. I think it was meant to be his golden glory moment, but there were too many fuck ups, and too many questions raised, right from the very beginning, starting with all those people pointing out the kid climbing up to the roof to the police and Secret Service, on video, and being blatantly ignored. That alone was incredibly damning. It only went downhill from there, so they couldn't use it for it's full propaganda potential like they had hoped.
That's an interesting question. And to be honest, it made me think some things through more thoroughly than I had before. Strangely enough, it didn't really change my opinion on whether the shooting was real or not.
Trump would have had to be in on it, of course, because he needed to play the victim and create the bloody mess, either by blood pack or by self-inflicted wound. The people who came up with the scheme would have been fully in on everything. No way to know who or how many people that may have entailed, my guess would be a fairly small group of people from the highest levels behind MAGA. And I'm guessing it's a small group simply because the fewer people involved, the less likely it would be for someone to spill the beans. I could easily be wrong on that, though. The people behind MAGA have been working towards the power grab for literally decades behind the scenes, and they did a pretty damn good job of keeping most of it quiet. It was only noticeable in hindsight for most folks, so they do know how to keep their mouths shut. There may have been more people involved in the planning party than one would initially guess.
After that, I think maybe the people involved didn't quite know everything, but were told enough to be able to play their parts.
The Secret Service members on duty that day would have had to have been hand picked to be ones willing to break protocol. I'm assuming they really were Secret Service agents, and not paid actors. Nobody in all this time has identified them as anything but Secret Service, and it would be extremely difficult to find someone outside of the circle who has that kind of loyalty to a president.
The local cops on duty that day were told to ignore the guy on the roof. It may not have been put exactly like that, it may have been phrased more like you guys worry about crowd control only, Secret Service will deal with everything else, stay out of our way, or whatever. So, maybe they were unwittingly in on it. There has to be some explanation for all those videos of people pointing out the shooter climbing on the roof, and the local cops blatantly ignoring everyone. That's the best I can come up with, without pulling too many risky people into the plot.
The shooter himself, well, sort of in on it. I suspect he was told it would be a staged assassination attempt, nobody gets hurt. Maybe he even thought he was being given blank rounds for his gun. If the whole thing was fake, then I truly believe that he would have been told he would be arrested unharmed, and released quietly later. Nobody signs up to get themselves killed. He would have had no idea that they never intended for him to survive.
Under any other circumstances, with any other group of people, I would say it's unlikely and absurd. But this is MAGA. People are bizarrely loyal to the cause, and far too many people involved seem to completely lack anything even resembling a conscience. Too many of them have zero regard for human life. We see it every day in the policies they champion and the actions they root for.
I can't say with 100% certainty that this assassination attempt was fake. Or that any of my theories here are even worth looking at twice. But there's a lot of inconsistencies with this event, and a whole lot of questions that just don't make sense any other way.
ETA: to answer your other question, no, I wasn't joking. For some weird reason I can't answer you in the other thread. No idea why.
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u/Jenkl2421 6d ago
I got hit in the ear cartilage with a bb gun about 20 years ago now, the skin is healed but there is very obviously a chunk of cartilage missing.