Journalist who inspected former President Donald Trump’s ear declares it ‘pristine’
A journalist who examined Donald Trump’s ear up close has revealed a surprising detail about the wound.
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A journalist who had the opportunity to personally inspect former US president Donald Trump’s ear, which was grazed by a bullet during his attempted assassination, has revealed what it looks like up close.
Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine was astonished at the appearance of the ear.
“The particular spot that he identified with his tap was pristine,” Ms Nuzzi wrote.
“I scanned carefully the rest of the terrain. It looked normal and incredible and fine.”
Ms Nuzzi, who was invited to Trump’s Florida residence Mar-A-Lago to interview the former president in the weeks after the shooting, went on to poetically describe the ear in question.
“An ear had never appeared to have gone through less,” Ms Nuzzi wrote.
“Except there, on the tiniest patch of this tiny sculpture of skin, a minor distortion that resembled not a crucifixion wound but the distant aftermath of a sunburn.’
Meanwhile, Melania Trump has opened up about the “horrible, distressing experience” of the attempted assassination of her husband, former US President Donald Trump, while vowing to “uncover the truth” about the circumstances leading up to the fateful rally in Pennsylvania.
https://t.co/ZCTwZSqZNDpic.twitter.com/KKA6anTEYC
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) September 10, 2024
Ms Trump, 54, made the comments in a video posted to X – her third in as many days after remaining largely invisible during her husband’s presidential campaign.
The former First Lady has broken her silence to support her husband in the lead up to the presidential debate but the timing has raised many eyebrows given Ms Trump is also taking the opportunity to promote her upcoming memoir Melania.
“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” Ms Trump said in a video posted to X.
“Now, the silence around it feels heavy.
“I can’t help but wonder: Why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?”
“There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.”
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HARRIS ARRIVES IN PHILLY FOR DEBATE
Kamala Harris has arrived in Philadelphia a day before the prime time debate with her Republican rival Donald Trump.
Ms Harris, who exited Air Force 2 and stepped into a waiting vehicle, had spent days in Pennsylvania’s other main city of Pittsburgh preparing for the televised showdown, which could be a make-or-break moment for either candidate, as the White House race appears likely to come down to the wire.
Mr Trump is not due to arrive until hours before Tuesday evening’s prime time clash on America’s ABC News.
The two candidates have never even met before, and the debate is set to be a contrast in styles between a former prosecutor and a convicted felon who has targeted Ms Harris with racist and sexist insults.
Earlier, Ms Harris warned that her opponent is “probably going to speak a lot of untruths” during their debate.
“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” the VP said in an interview with Rickey Smiley on Monday local time.
“We should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth. And we should be prepared for the fact that he is probably going to speak a lot of untruths, adding “I think he’s going to lie.”
She continued: “He has a playbook that he has used in the past, be it, you know, his attacks on President Obama or Hillary Clinton. So we should expect that some of that might come out.”
WHITE STRIPES SUE TRUMP
Rock duo Jack and Meg White of The White Stripes have filed a lawsuit against Mr Trump after their song Seven Nation Army was used in a campaign video.
The musicians have called the usage a “flagrant misappropriation”.
Mr White shared the first page of the lawsuit, which was filed in court in New York, on his Instagram account.
“This machine sues fascists,” the caption read.
The copyright infringement suit is seeking significant monetary damages and lists Mr Trump and his campaign staffer Margo McAtee Martin as defendants.
Ms Martin posted a video to X on 29 August showing Mr Trump boarding a plane with the song Seven Nation Army playing in the background.
The video has since been deleted.
The lawsuit alleges that Mr Trump’s campaign did not seek or obtain permission from the band to use the song.
HOW TRUMP PLANS TO ATTACK HARRIS
Former US president Donald Trump wants to make Vice President Kamala Harris answer for her record in public office during the presidential debate, beginning with her tenure as San Francisco district attorney, republican sources told the New York Post.
Trump campaign senior adviser Tim Murtaugh said “She will not be able to escape from it. By the end of this debate, everyone will know her record.”
Mr Murtaugh also predicted that Ms Harris will try to distance herself from having been Joe Biden’s vice president for three-and-a-half years, but will not be “permitted” to do so by Mr Trump.
“That point will be made clear,” Mr Murtaugh said.
Mr Trump, 78, has previously said he has not prepped for the debate in the traditional sense and indicated he will decide his ultimate strategy at the last minute.
In the Vice President’s only major pre-debate interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Ms Harris said “my values have not changed.”
“That means that everything she did in her prior career leading up to this point is brought into the present day,” Mr Murtaugh said.
“That means she is the San Francisco liberal she always was. She’s just pretending not to be that.”
Another Trump campaign official said that Mr Trump will go hard at Ms Harris’ record during her seven years as the top prosecutor in San Francisco.
“Kamala Harris is going to have to remember the names of the people whose lives were lost in San Francisco due to her weak-on-crime policies,” this person said.
“She’s going to have to be prepared to answer for why criminals like [illegal immigrant] Edwin Ramos were free to kill. She’ll have to explain to the nation why she wanted to give drug dealers a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“President Trump is not going to let her get away with the lie that she is some law-and-order prosecutor.”
“These crimes, these criminals, these specific cases, she’s going to have to answer for,” Mr Murtaugh said.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said the Republican nominee will call out Ms Harris’ avoidance of the media.
“Harris’ new Obama campaign advisers have told her to hide from the press for two months, further raising expectations for the voters,” said Mr Miller.
It comes as the US presidential race remains a nailbiter, with latest polling confirming that Donald Trump retains locked-in support from about half of voters, despite his status as a convicted felon and his attempt to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
OPRAH TO HOST VIRTUAL RALLY FOR HARRIS
Oprah Winfrey is throwing her star power behind Kamala Harris with a live streamed rally next week.
The September 19 gathering will be co-hosted with Win With Black Women (WWBW) and around 150 other groups supporting the VP.
“This ‘Unite for America’ call will be a powerful moment that demonstrates the urgency that we all feel in this moment and more importantly the impact of our collective activation to move our nation forward with Vice President Kamala Harris as our 47th President,” said Jotaka Eaddy, social impact strategist and founder of WWBW.
“I cannot think of anyone better to host this event than Oprah Winfrey, who has brought Americans of different generations, backgrounds, and experiences together in conversation for decades,” she added.
HARRIS HASTILY DEPLOYS POLICY
Kamala Harris, who only jumped into the race after President Biden quit in July, has rapidly transformed herself from a little-noticed vice president into a serious contender.
However, the polls show she has not made a major breakthrough, leaving the race a toss-up.
In a last-minute attempt to combat a weakness in her campaign, Vice President Harris has finally added policies to her campaign website – less than 48 hours before the debate, and 50 days after Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
The website outlines Ms Harris and her vice-presidential running mate Tim Walz’ policy proposals into four sections: “Build an Opportunity Economy and Lower Costs for Families,” “Safeguard Our Fundamental Freedoms,” “Ensure Safety and Justice For All,” and “Keep America Safe, Secure, and Prosperous.”
The plans include “rolling back Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, enacting a billionaire minimum tax, quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks, and other reforms to ensure the very wealthy are playing by the same rules as the middle class.”
Before the new addition, Harris’ campaign website was devoid of policy, even weeks after she accepted the nomination at the Democratic National Convention.
HARRIS HONEYMOON OFFICIALLY OVER
A New York Times/Siena poll found that 78-year-old Mr Trump is leading Ms Harris nationally by 48 to 47 per cent, well within the margin of error.
US presidential elections are decided by tallying the results of state-by-state contests, rather than an overall national popular vote, meaning that a tiny handful of swing states typically determine the balance.
The poll found Ms Harris, 59, narrowly ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and tied in four other swing states: Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.
A CBS News/YouGov poll put Ms Harris ahead by one percentage point in Michigan and Wisconsin and tied in Pennsylvania.
The election is already chaotic, with 81-year-old Mr Biden dropping out amid concerns over his age, Mr Trump narrowly surviving an assassin’s bullet at a rally, and fears mounting that Mr Trump will again refuse to concede if he loses in November.
However, the latest numbers confirm that each candidate retains a remarkably stable base of loyalists, almost evenly splitting the country.
One game changer could be Tuesday’s ABC News debate, the only one scheduled between the two.
Mr Trump will be under pressure to rein in his characteristic use of insults and intimidation as he stands next to a mixed-race candidate vying to become the first female president in US history.
Ms Harris will need to use the huge viewership to connect with Americans in a way that she was unable to as vice president and has had little time to accomplish in her compressed campaign run.
With Mr Trump now the oldest presidential nominee in US history, Ms Harris is pitching an optimistic, forward-looking message in contrast to Mr Trump’s apocalyptic claims that the country faces terminal decline without him in the White House.
But Ms Harris has also been accused of running on vague optimism and unity at the expense of putting out concrete policies.
She finally addressed the growing pressure late Sunday when her campaign put out a policy page, touching on subjects from unions and cost-of-living issues to health care.
At the same time, Ms Harris will have to solve the conundrum of how to debate Mr Trump, who habitually makes false statements on nearly every topic and loves to get under his opponents’ skin.
Already, Trump has been subjecting Ms Harris in his speeches to racist and sexist taunts, deliberately mispronouncing her name and calling her “crazy” and a “Marxist.”
The Harris campaign has announced it would “barnstorm battleground states” after the debate, beginning in North Carolina, then Pennsylvania.
– with AFP
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Originally published as Journalist who inspected former President Donald Trump’s ear declares it ‘pristine’