This article has two main claims: 1) social media users are spreading a photo to prove Trump was not injured from the gunfire at his July 13th rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and 2) This photo was taken almost 2 years ago.
For the first claim, the author includes the text of an X post of the photo that reads “The top part of his ear grew back”. I found this X post posted by user @guelphgirlchris on July 15th at 4:23 pm and it currently has 3.5 million views and 6.4 thousand reposts.
The author also includes the text of another X post of the picture that says "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". I found this X post posted by user @lisa_liberal on July 15th at 5:07 pm, and it currently has over 2.4 million views, and 6.7 thousand reposts.
For the second claim--that photo used is from almost two years ago--the author includes a link to the original Reuters copy of the photo uploaded on September 18th, 2022. The author also includes links to two separate news articles that include this photo from around the time the photo was taken, the first article being "JD Vance playing defense in unexpectedly close Ohio Senate race" by The Guardian dated September 25th, 2022, and the second being "Candidates take stage as November nears: Here are 4 debates this week to watch" by USA Today dated October 10th, 2022.
As this photo was taken nearly two years before the Butler rally, it cannot prove Trump's ear was uninjured by the gunfire, which makes the central claim of the article (that social media users are falsely presenting an old photo as proof Trump was uninjured by the gunfire) true.
