Former White House photographer Pete Souza deleted his account on social platform X after receiving backlash for sharing a photo of former President Trump’s ear.
In the post, Souza appeared to question the extent of Trump’s injury from the shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month.
In Saturday’s post, Souza shared an Associated Press photo of Trump boarding his plane that day and told users to look “closely” at the former president’s ear that was struck by a bullet during the shooting.
“Photo from AP this morning,” Souza wrote in his Saturday post. “Look closely at the ear that was ‘hit’ by a bullet from an AR-15 assault rifle.”
In the days following the shooting, Trump was spotted wearing a bandage over his right ear. In the photo that Souza shared, he was not wearing a bandage when boarding the plane.
After receiving online criticism for the photo, Souza said in a post on Instagram Monday that he deleted his X account.
“So I deactivated my Twitter account. It was an instinctive decision, made only by me. I’m still not sure if this is a temporary or permanent action,” Souza wrote in a lengthy Instagram post.
On Monday afternoon, Souza’s account on X said it did not exist.
Souza said his post on X received responses claiming the photo was taken at a different time or claiming the ear featured was not the same as the one that was shot. He said he responded to that criticism by sharing a post from Doug Mills of The New York Times, which was another photo of Trump boarding the plane at the same time and location as the AP photo.
“Doug is one of Trump’s favorite photographers and Trump has publicly called him ‘my genius photographer.’ So I thought the magazine world would at least believe Doug Mills. They didn’t. The comments got ugly. Mostly about me, but also some who looked down on Doug Mills,” he wrote on Instagram.
He said that although he was used to receiving negative comments about himself, his posts exposed Mills “as the recipient of hateful messages on MY Twitter account,” which he wrote as “Not cool.”
Souza also clarified that X’s owner, Elon Musk, did not remove it from the platform, as some users were suggesting. He said he received a text message from The New York Times asking if he had any comment about apparently being kicked out of X.
“It was time to respond. I have a lot more to say about the state of social media, but for now I want to make it clear that I have not been kicked off Twitter. I kicked myself out,” he wrote in his Instagram post.
Speculation has increased in the weeks following the shooting about whether Trump’s ear was hit by a bullet or shrapnel after a gunman shot him during the July 13 rally. Trump insisted he was hit by the bullet, not glass or shrapnel, and the FBI later confirmed it was a bullet.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
