NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trumps campaign released an update on the former president’s health on Saturday, a week after he survived an attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The memo from Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, who served as Trump’s White House physician, provides new details about the nature of the Republican candidate’s injuries and the treatment he received immediately after the attack.
According to Jackson, Trump suffered a gunshot wound to his right ear from a high-powered weapon that “came less than a quarter inch from his head and struck the top of his right ear.”
The bullet trajectory, he said, “caused a 2cm wide wound extending to the cartilage surface of the ear. There was significant initial bleeding followed by marked swelling of the entire upper portion of the ear.”
Although the swelling has now gone down and the wound is “starting to granulate and heal nicely,” he said Trump still experiences occasional bleeding, requiring the bandages displayed at the Republican National Convention last week.
“Given the wide and blunt nature of the wound itself, sutures were not necessary,” he wrote.
Trump was initially treated by medical staff at Butler Memorial Hospital. According to Jackson, doctors “conducted a thorough evaluation for additional injuries, including a CT scan of his head.”
Trump, he said, “will undergo further evaluations, including a comprehensive hearing exam, if necessary. He will follow up with his primary care physician as directed by the physicians who initially evaluated him,” he wrote.
“In short, former President Trump is doing well and is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound he sustained last Saturday afternoon,” he added.
The letter is the first official update about the former president’s condition since the night of the shooting.
Jackson, a staunch Trump supporter, wrote in the letter that as Trump’s former physician, he was deeply concerned about the former president’s well-being following the attack and that he met with him Saturday night in Bedminster, New Jersey, after Trump returned from Pennsylvania “to personally visit with him and offer him my assistance in every way possible.”
He said he has been with Trump since then, assessing and treating his wound daily. That includes traveling with him to Michigan on Saturday, where the former president will hold his first rally since the shooting, along with his recently named running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio.
It is unclear whether Jackson is still a licensed physician. A spokesman for the congressman did not immediately comment, and the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions.
Reports from the American Board of Emergency Medicine show that Jackson has an emergency room certificate valid until the end of 2015.
Last year, on President Joe Biden’s 81st birthday, Trump’s campaign released a letter from Dr. Bruce A. Aronwald, a New Jersey physician who said he had been the former president’s physician since 2021.
