The Trump shooting takes a surreal turn

| 4:30 pm EDT July 26, 2024
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

Texas Congressman and former day-drunk doctor Ronny Jackson insists that Donald Trump was hit by an actual bullet from his attempted assassination on July 13th. “It was a bullet,” Jackson posted on X. “I’ve seen the wound!” Meanwhile, FBI director Christopher Wray has raised questions about whether Trump was actually in fact hit by a bullet. “There’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray testified earlier to Congress.

Jackson was incensed by Wray’s statement. “What little credibility he may have left is GONE after recklessly suggesting Trump might not have been hit from a bullet,” Jackson posted. Recall this is the same doctor who, after examining Trump in 2018, gushed that Trump was (contrary to my own admittedly non-medical eyes) in “very, very good health.” He also confirmed that Trump was six foot three inches in height and 239 lbs in weight. He also confirmed that Trump can leap over tall buildings in a single bound. Actually, I added that last part.

But in the end, as far as the assassination attempt goes, nothing really matters, as Freddy Mercury put it. Naturally, being grazed by a bullet has slightly better optics favourable to Trump than, say, a shard of plastic from a teleprompter. But it doesn’t change the fact that Trump really was shot at, nor does it improve the fact that the candidacy of Kamala Harris has knocked Trump’s assassination attempt back to page 10.

Of course, many self-styled “experts” on the internet, fresh from their recent careers as Covid-19 immunologists, dramatically display photos of AR-15 shells (not mere bullets, but full unfired cartridges) and insist that it’s “impossible” that Trump could have been hit by such things. They would have “taken his whole ear off,” or other such nonsense. They ignore the fact that people have been grazed and slightly bloodied by cannonballs.

The hysteria and self-anointed experts aside, the real-life attempt on Trump’s life seems to have done him very little good. Since the injury to his ear was slight and superficial, and since he played golf the very next day without any visible bandage, it’s looking more and more, even to the average stupid observer (e.g. a MAGA Trump supporter), that Trump’s popular uptick from the incident is slight, possibly even nonexistent. In fact, there could be some case for the possibility that it’s hurt him.

For one, Trump is doing what one must never do in such instances. He’s boasting and exaggerating about it. The only way the assassination attempt could have worked in Trump’s favour was if he had tried to underplay it. But Trump, who never ceases to amaze me at how truly stupid he is, doesn’t know how to underplay anything. So he missed yet another example of a gift from the gods. He could have truly made himself look good. Instead, with his absurd bandage and melodramatic braggadocio, he made himself look like the fool that he truly is.

Trump could have, figuratively speaking anyway, laughed the whole thing off. But I don’t know what that would sound like, because I’ve never heard Trump laugh. Funny, isn’t it, that while MAGA Republicans are mocking Kamala Harris’ laugh (which is quite charming, I think), they don’t know what their toad-God’s laugh sounds like.

Anyway, the big news for July wasn’t Trump’s inflated “brush with death” but his campaign’s actual brush with death at the hands of Kamala Harris. So far it’s been a direct hit, a double-tap to the body. The Harris candidacy has been a symbolic assassination. I don’t believe Trump’s going to survive it. Ironic, don’t you think? And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.