Republican National Convention attendees have found a somewhat creative way to show their support for Donald Trump following the assassination attempt over the weekend.
On Tuesday, several convention delegates were seen sporting ear bandages in a nod to the former president’s current look after he was struck in the right ear by a bullet in the attack.
One Republican delegate even went as far as to describe the ear bandage as “the newest fashion trend.”
“Everybody in the world is going to be wearing these pretty soon,” Joe Neglia, a delegate from Arizona, told CBS News while donning a white piece of paper over his right ear.
Neglia told Fox News he was inspired when Trump entered the auditorium on Monday night to rapturous applause, the white bandage visible over his injury.
“Yesterday when he came in, and there was that eruption of love in the room, I thought, ‘what can I do to honor the truth? What can I possibly do?’” he said on Tuesday.
“And then I saw the bandage and I thought, I can do that. So, I put it on simply to honor Trump and to express sympathy with him and unity with him.”
Fellow Arizona delegate Stacey Goodman, who was also sporting a folded up piece of paper over her ear, said she had jumped on the trend “in solidarity with my president, Trump, not the current thing that’s in the administration.”
On Monday night, Trump made his first public appearance since the attempt on his life at the RNC, hours after the former president officially received enough delegates to top the party’s presidential ticket and after he announced JD Vance as his vice presidential pick.
Entering the Fiserv Forum with the white bandage around his ear, the crowd went wild chanting “USA!” and “fight, fight fight!” – echoing Trump’s chant to the crowd as he pumped his fist in the air in the seconds after he survived the shooting.
Trump returned to the convention for a second night on Tuesday, still sporting the bandage, where he listened to his former Republican presidential candidate rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis sing his praises and endorse him on stage.
The former president is expected to deliver a speech on stage at the convention on Thursday night, though he has claimed that the content of that speech is now up in the air in light of his near-death experience.
Rather than delivering an address that lashes out at President Joe Biden, Trump told The New York Post on Sunday that he had decided to refocus his efforts on a need to “unite the country”.
“I had all prepared an extremely tough speech, really good, all about the corrupt, horrible administration,” he said. “But I threw it away.”
Instead, he said it will take a new angle: “I want to try to unite our country.”
Trump has described his survival as a “miracle” after a bullet appeared to missed him by mere inches as he moved his head at just the right moment.
Trump was just minutes into his campaign speech at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening when gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from the rooftop of a building just outside of the rally security perimeter.
While Trump was struck in the ear, he quickly leaped to the ground and Secret Service agents rushed on stage to protect him.
Agents returned fire on the gunman, shooting him dead at the scene.
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief attending the rally with his family, was killed as he threw his body over his loved ones to protect them from the shooter’s spray of bullets. Two other rallygoers – David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74 – were hospitalized.
Many questions still remain unanswered about the events of the day, with authorities still working to piece together the gunman’s motive and the Secret Service facing scrutiny for its security precautions.