Perspective | In Trump’s bandage, gauzy symbols abound

What was it, physically? According to Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), the former White House physician who said he originally affixed the bandage to Trump’s ear, the bandage was “bulked up a bit because you need a bit of absorbent. You don’t want to be walking around with bloody gauze on his ear.” Ears “bleed like crazy,” Jackson told the New York Times, and his professional solution was what we all spent four days staring at from our televisions: a tidy white rectangle hovering on the former president’s ear.

At any rate. People who were shot at get to wear what they want, but the story of the RNC ear bandages got weird when the bandages began appearing on the ears of attendees who had not been wounded in a shooting. I’m trying to think of a way to say this plainer, in case there is any confusion: uninjured supporters of Trump at the Republican National Convention spent the week taping white squares on their ears because, as one supporter told the BBC, she wanted to show Trump “how much we love him.”

Her bandage was not clean and tidy, it was rumpled and improvised as if, seeking her own absorbent, she had turned to Kleenex or Kotex. News organizations assembled photo galleries: Another attendee’s pretend bandage seemed to be stuck to his hair, not his ear, and yet another’s looked like it was literally a piece of printer paper Scotch-taped to his head. There is a Spanish phrase, pena ajena, which doesn’t have a direct English translation, but which refers to the idea that someone else has done something so embarrassing that you feel humiliated on their behalf.

The aesthetics of the original bandage were interesting, only because they seemed to be at odds with Trump’s usual presentation of strength, power, masculinity. The man is notoriously vain, and one imagines that if you have time, money and the resources of the entire Republican National Committee at your disposal, you could commission a bespoke flesh-colored bandage, maybe something contoured and discreet. On medical Twitter, doctors and nurses puzzled through the mechanics of Trump’s bandage in great detail: it didn’t have to look that way, they assured the rest of us.

But instead, for four days running, Trump protected his ear with the most conspicuous dressing imaginable. If the bandage had instead been bedazzled with the Trump logo, even that would have been more expected — the showman has rarely missed a branding opportunity. The plain white gauze, though, was something else. It was distinctly un-Trumplike. It was clunky, it was pedestrian, it was awkward. Above all else, though, it was a reminder.

The lasting, horrifying image from the Butler, Pa., rally last Saturday was of Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, shouting “fight” with blood smeared across his face.

The bandage reminded us of those initial terror-filled moments, and of the way Trump had behaved during them. This man had long been dogged by insinuations of physical cowardice — he was protected from the draft by bone spurs — but now, under a hail of bullets, shedding blood in pursuit of public service, Trump had rehabilitated his origin story with a defiantly pumped fist. You could loathe the man, and still recognize that the optics of his instincts looked badass.

I was wounded, the bandage said. Never forget that they tried to wound me.

In this way, the bandage was a familiar message. It was, in fact, the message that, over the years has become one of Trump’s most revisited messages: that he has been uniquely and unfairly hurt. Persecuted and prosecuted by any number of nefarious villains: the liberal left, the deep state, the activist judges, lowly poll workers, Dominion voting machines, Barack Obama, Joe Biden.

“He chose to endure abuse, slander and persecution,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Trump’s running mate, from the convention center podium on Wednesday, as he described Trump’s political journey.

“Nobody has endured more than what he’s been through,” said South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R).

And so on, continuing with Thursday night’s convention speeches: “They’ve thrown everything at Donald Trump,” said Hulk Hogan, “ … and he’s still standing and kicking their butts.”

“They’ve tried everything to destroy his legacy, to destroy his family,” said Trump’s son Eric. “ … He has been ruthlessly silenced, slandered and attacked by a corrupt administration.” At one point he addressed his father directly: “We know, and America knows, that they’re not just after you, they’re after all of us and you just happen to be standing in their way.”

I have been wounded. We have been wounded. Never forget that what they do to me, they are doing to you, but I am the one who will take it.

Trump’s bandage was medically necessary, his doctor said. But for the supporters who fashioned their own make-believe Band-Aids, I wonder if there was a different kind of necessity: the understanding that the world can be a scary place and the belief that they had found a man who would take on their grievances and make them his own.

When Trump himself took the stage Thursday night, his speech began as more subdued than the ones that had come before it. He had promised it would be unifying, not divisive. In the hours leading up to it, moving excerpts were released. Talking heads on CNN speculated that maybe he was a changed man, transformed, as many are, by near death. And there were, indeed, many moving sections: “I shouldn’t be here,” he told the audience, describing the shooting.

But then, slowly, the 1½-hour-long speech went off script and back into familiar territory, which is to say, bizarre and often angry territory. He talked about “crazy Nancy Pelosi.” He talked about immigration, crime, transgender athletes, taxes, the Yankees, Hannibal Lecter, and sweet Moses only knows what else before eventually petering out and greeting his wife, Melania, on the stage for the balloon drop. He talked about “the partisan witch hunt that I’ve been going through for the past eight years.”

He had been through something life-altering, but it wasn’t clear how much he had been altered.

For Trump, the wounds are always on display.