By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
BROWNSVILLE, Texas |...It's the story of the long, hot summer, its heat equally relentless as is our annual scorch. The political temperature is not abating. We're still in the white-hot zone.
Yesterday's first day at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee delivered staged drama of the sort most adults are familiar with - bands and speeches, a rowdy crowd and a few surprises.
And the Man of The Hour, of course.
A bandaged Donald J. Trump made an appearance to announce his presidential Veep running made and, well, it was not Mike Pence. Who knows where Trump's last VEEP is these days, but last night was a night-of-nights for Ohio's junior U.S. Senator, one J.D. Vance.
The gathering in Wisconsin moves to some more of the same self-adulation by party speakers and attendees today, with Trump's party nomination slated for Prime Time on Thursday night. The celebration has been non-stop since that shooting last Saturday in Pennsylvania, where the 78-year-old Trump is said to have been the target of an assassination attempt.
Last night's presence of a white bandage over Trump's right ear fell in with the narrative that he was shot, only too many questions remain unanswered - although the mainstream press seems to have accepted it and moved on.
There is no confirmation that Trump's bloody ear was hit by a bullet. We could find no credible report from anyone, not even from the FBI.
Trump did have what looked like a steady stream of blood trickling down his face as agents rushed him offstage at the afternoon rally. And Trump later said on Truth Social that the bullet hit the upper part of his right ear.
But, yeah, who knows.
The Internet is still chock-full of conspiracy theories related to the shooting, with some saying the blood on Trump's face was "Hollywood blood," a reference to fake blood used in movie gunfire, or often in fake professional wrestling.
But away from the online sleuths, the country seems to have accepted the shooting as an attempt at killing Trump. The news segued into who did it after the shooting and "facts" then pointed to a 20-year-old local nursing home cook names Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed as he lay on the rooftop of a building some 400 feet from the rally stage, where Trump stood.
There are always questions with this sort of thing. How many remain unanswered from the shooting of President John F. Kennedy in 1963? Books have been written.
The "patch" Trump wore last night was an odd one, in that photos taken in the seconds after the shooting showed something that looked like the main wound on the top of his right earlobe. The bandage he wore at the convention (see photo above) covered the entire ear. Who knows, but a rookie nurse would likely have applied a smaller band-aid over the damaged part of the ear and left the rest of it alone.
But this is Big Time politics and a wound suffered on the campaign trail will be milked for all it's worth.
Donald Trump knows optics...
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