As I noted in real time, during a hearing on the Trump shooting yesterday, FBI Director Chris Wray suggested that the FBI is not sure whether the former President was hit by a bullet or shrapnel.
I’ve held off on posting about it, because I expect we’ll get further clarification from the FBI. But Josh Marshall and others have been focused closely on it since, which has set off some squirrelness among Trump’s boosters.
Propagandists have set Trump’s own narrative of the shooting to video.
Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Wray wasn’t credible — and that it wouldn’t matter anyway if Trump was falsely claiming he “took a bullet for democracy” if, in reality, he had taken shrapnel for fascism.
Johnson said he didn’t find Wray’s testimony credible.
“We’ve all seen the video, we’ve seen the analysis, we’ve heard it from multiple sources in different angles that a bullet went through his ear. I’m not sure it matters that much,” Johnson said.
He also said Wray “was not forthcoming with some of the information that we would expect.”
And then, finally, Ronny Jackson weighed in. First, he screamed that it was irresponsible for the FBI Director to suggest the evidence was not certainy.
More remarkably, he told CBS that, of course it was a bullet, because if it wasn’t, what would have hit him?
If it wasn’t a bullet wound, I ask you: ‘What was it’? Piece of glass? Where’d the glass come from? I’ve been told the teleprompters are completely intact. So what just mysteriously.. a piece of glass just appeared out of nowhere?
This is where things get really weird.
That’s because Ronny Jackson — I believe this was before he had yet seen Trump after the shooting — described that his nephew, who was sitting close to Trump, was injured when “something had grazed and cut his neck.”
Maybe, just maybe, the same kind of thing that hit his nephew also hit Trump, standing just a short distance away?
Again, I’m agnostic and don’t much care which it was. I care that Trump has refused to provide real medical transparency about the incident, and the press corp has — before Wray’s testimony — largely let that slide. If it was a bullet that damaged his ear, there are actually greater ongoing concerns about head injuries.
But this now smells like flopsweat.
Just release the medical records.