The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump on July 20 posted a memo from Ronny Jackson, his former White House physician and now one of his political allies, describing the clearest public account yet of the ear injury Trump suffered in the July 13 rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. Jackson said Trump had a 2-centimeter wound to his right ear caused by a bullet track from a high-powered rifle, that the injury had bled significantly and caused swelling, and that no stitches were required. He also said the ear was still intermittently bleeding, was being dressed, and was beginning to granulate and heal properly. The memo said Trump received initial treatment at Butler Memorial Hospital and underwent a CT scan of his head there.

The document does add detail, but it does not come from the physicians who treated Trump at the hospital. That matters because the memo is both a medical update and a political artifact. It provides a specific description of the wound and the early treatment, but it still leaves the public relying on a Trump ally to narrate the injury after the fact.

Trump’s appearance at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids later that day underscored the political message his team wanted to send: he had been injured and was back on stage. But the rally was a campaign event, not a medical clearance, and it does not answer the underlying question of how the injury was documented by the clinicians who actually saw him. What the memo does establish is narrower and more concrete: Trump was treated at Butler Memorial Hospital, was scanned there, and was still receiving wound care on July 20.

So the memo sharpens the timeline without closing it. It confirms a serious ear wound, ongoing bleeding, and hospital treatment after the July 13 shooting. It does not provide a hospital doctor’s full record or independent medical documentation that would settle every remaining question about the injury and recovery. For now, the most detailed public account is still coming through a loyal surrogate, and that keeps the medical facts and the political message uncomfortably intertwined.