ear-gate: why is the press giving Donald Trump yet another free pass?

what's going on under that bandage?

on March 30, 1981, some delusional fuckface named John Hinckley Jr. decided that the best way to impress the shit out of his imaginary girlfriend Jodie Foster was to pump a few bullets into then-President Ronald Reagan.

spoiler alert: Jodie was not impressed.

if you’ve been kicking around this planet long enough to remember Reagan’s near-assassination, you’ll also remember the total media frenzy that surrounded it. reporters were camped out in front of the hospital. doctors and hospital staff gave numerous live press conferences and issued frequently-updated medical reports.

when Reagan waved from his hospital window, the press spontaneously orgasmed,

on July 13, 2024, some dweeby dipshit incel named Thomas Matthew Crooks fired an unknown number of bullets in the general direction of Donny Convict. one of the bullets is alleged to have grazed the tippy tip of Donny’s ear.

that’s all we know about what happened. no medical report, no press conferences. no official statements — just an unconfirmed rumor that Donny spent the weekend playing golf at his New Jersey ex-wife cemetery, and then on Monday he showed up at the RNC with a clownishly-oversized maxi-pad on his ear.

so where is our compliant corporate-controlled media in all of this? did they spend the weekend camped out in front of Donny’s Bedminster golf motel? are they demanding answers? are they insisting on seeing medical reports?

fuck no, they are not. they’re too busy pumping out syrupy fan fiction — like this atrocity from the Washington Post.

basically Team Trump told the press to fuck off, we’re not saying shit, and the press just meekly fucked off.

excuse me, but what the bloody hell?

just suppose it was Joe Biden who got shot at. do you in your wildest dreams imagine that the media would accept fuck off as an answer? of course they wouldn’t. they’d be screaming for REAL ANSWERS, NOW!

the coverage would be without mercy. WHAT IS JOE BIDEN HIDING? IS HE ALREADY DEAD AND TOO DEMENTED TO KNOW IT?

yesterday we found out that Joe Biden has covid. within half an hour, Biden’s doctor issued a full medical report, complete with pulse rate and body temperature.

that’s what full disclosure looks like.

compare that to the big bowl of bullshit that Team Trump has been feeding us for six days now. here’s the full extent of what Donny’s said to date.

“The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle.”

are you fucking kidding me? the doctor at the hospital never saw some befuddled old geezer with a nick on his ear? how long before Donny turns this into another “sir” story? “sir! sir! no one has ever survived a grazed ear before. so much death and misery from scratches on ears, you wouldn’t believe it. but you — sir! sir! it’s a miracle.”

so, can we talk to this mysterious doctor and confirm first-hand that he never saw anything like this? can we get a medical report? can we just get the doctor’s name? of course we fucking can’t.

A spokesman for Butler Memorial Hospital, Tom Chakurda, told the Daily Beast Monday, “We’re deferring any comment to the Trump team.” The Trump campaign declined to respond to questions about Trump’s condition and treatment.

oh, but you know who we can hear from? Ronny Jackson, the disgraced day-drunk quack who turned the Trump White House Medical Wing into a pill-popping free-for-all — the guy who proclaimed that Donny would live to be 200 years old.

apparently, it was Ronny’s decision to wrap Donny’s ear in that silly maxi-pad — because scratches bleed, he says.

oh, please. the bandage is cartoonishly oversized because it makes for good theater. it gives the cultists one more holy relic to worship. and sure enough …

it’s not just Donny’s physical health that needs to be examined. as Rex Huppke notes in USA Today,

One doesn’t get almost killed and not feel a psychological toll. In a 2022 story about the mental health toll of gun violence, The New York Times reported that the psychological impact for shooting survivors “may include post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, self-harm and major depressive disorders.”

Donny was already a burst trash-bag of putrefying personality defects. it’s scary to think about what’s now going on in that worm-infested brain.

of course, no one should be surprised that Donny is hiding the facts. Donny hides everything. he’s never released his college grades. he’s the only modern-era president who refused to make his tax returns public. he confiscated the translator’s notes that were taken during his meetings with Putin. want to see his White House visitor logs? go fuck yourself.

in 2019, Donny was rushed to the Mayo Clinic. we never found out why.

the worthless scribblers of the media have normalized this behavior. they’ve decided that Donny is a Very Special Boy Who Doesn’t Need To Be Held Accountable, and so they just let him slide. move along, nothing to see here.

the hypocrisy stinks out loud.

the press hounded the fuck out of Joe Biden for weeks, demanding a live press conference. they wouldn’t shut up until they got one — and even then it wasn’t enough to please them. but you know who hasn’t given a live press conference in the entire time he’s been a candidate? Donny Convict. where is the outrage?

why the endless cornucopia of free passes for Donny?

dozens of former Trump administration officials have gone on record saying that Donny is unfit for office, and the press is all yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

the guy can’t get through a speech without blithering incoherently about how water is wet but they don’t want you to have any, or how Hannibal Lecter invited a battery-powered shark over for dinner. isn’t Donny’s obviously-increasing dementia something the press might want to look into? nah, not when they can hound Joe Biden instead.

Donny can’t do a pre-taped interview without being heavily-edited. the press can’t be bothered to find out why.

Donny insists that a hundred thousand people attended a rally in a space that only holds five thousand, and the press goes wow, Donny must be really popular.

Donny says he’ll be a dictator, but only on day one, and the press is all well if it’s just for one day, that’s cool.

Donny claims he never heard of Project 2025 — despite massive evidence to the contrary — and the press goes ok, if you say so.

Donny announces he’s suddenly into quote-unquote “unity,” and the press goes oh yeah, unity is awesome and writes a thousand glowing think-pieces about the new, humane Donald Trump.

and now, ear-gate. what the fuck is going on under that bandage?

and why is the press so disinterested in finding out?

folks, a word on a different subject before I let you go: we’re doing some quarterly fundraising at my other venture, The Smirking Chimp. I’m leery of even mentioning it because if you’re one of the people paying to support my own writing here, you’re already doing god’s work and you’re already doing more than enough to help out. but if you’ve got five dollars that you absolutely wouldn’t miss and you do feel like supporting the Chimp, well, that just makes you twice the hero. the donation link is here, or you can go straight to paypal if you need no further convincing. and if you don’t care to donate, that’s totally cool, too, and we will not speak of this again. in fact, we never had this conversation. thanks for listening and that’s it from me for now.