Since July 2024, when an assassination attempt against U.S. President Donald Trump occurred during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, a screenshot has spread across the internet claiming to show Trump posting on X about his recovery from the shooting.
According to the screenshot in the posts — which originally spread soon after the assassination attempt — Trump wrote on X that a bullet entirely removed his ear, but the ear began regrowing the next day.
Screenshots of the purported post recirculated in April 2026. The post supposedly stated:
It took my entire ear off. The whole ear. But I went to the doctor, and he said, and this is true, he said, you heal faster than anyone I've ever seen. Nobody is healthier than you. And the next day, my ear was growing back, and the doctor said, nobody regrows ears like that, and its a really remarkable thing, regrowing an ear like that, most people can't do it. And I know that, because its not me saying this, it's the doctor, its everybody saying, just, you're the best at regrowing ears.
(X user @AgentSelf99B)
The above post was not real. We found no evidence of it on any of Trump's social media accounts, including on his X account. As such, we rate the above screenshot claiming Trump regrew his ear as fake.
Furthermore, Trump's campaign released a medical letter detailing what exactly happened to the former president's ear as the bullet narrowly missed his skull.
The letter — signed by U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, who served as Trump's White House physician — stated that Trump sustained a gunshot wound to the right ear that came "less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head, and struck the top of his right ear." The bullet track "produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear. There was initially significant bleeding, followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear."
After the assassination attempt, Trump appeared at the Republican National Convention with a white bandage covering the upper section of his right ear. The bandage did not cover the whole ear, indicating that the ear was not taken off by a bullet.