MILWAUKEE — Three days since a Pennsylvania shooter opened fire at a campaign rally and wounded Donald Trump’s ear, the former president and his campaign have revealed next to nothing about his condition.
Trump appeared in public for the first time on Monday evening at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and wore an opaque bandage that covered most of his right ear.
A Trump adviser on Tuesday declined to answer specific questions about the former president’s injury, telling NBC News that any statements about Trump’s health, his condition and medical care related to his ear would come directly from the former president.
But Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, who served as the White House’s top doctor under the Trump administration, told NBC News on Tuesday that he had examined Trump personally and that Trump was “doing great.”
Jackson also told a podcast on Tuesday that the former president is now missing the top part of his ear and that Trump will wear a bandage on the ear for the foreseeable future.
Though Trump appeared publicly on Monday as he was formally nominated to be the GOP presidential nominee, and just a few hours after he officially tapped Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance to be his vice presidential running mate, Trump has not given any on-camera remarks or interviews since Saturday’s shooting.
He spoke off-camera to the New York Post and the Washington Examiner, among others, in the days following the shooting, but he was mum about his medical condition, volunteering only that, “the doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this, he called it a miracle.”
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, who is also Trump’s daughter-in-law, told NBC News Tuesday that she spoke to the former president for the first time after the shooting while he was still at the hospital. She said that she “knew that he was fine and that everything was going to be OK” after he started cracking jokes and asking her about preparations for this week’s convention.
She added at the roundtable hosted by Bloomberg News that she expects Trump will head back to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of Saturday’s rally, when he returns to the campaign trail.
“There’s no one who wants to get back out to a rally more than Donald Trump himself,” she told reporters.
