Former White House photographer Pete Souza deleted his account on the social platform X after receiving backlash over sharing a photo of former President Trump’s ear.
In the post, Souza appeared to question the extent of Trump’s wound from the shooting at his campaign rally in Butler, Pa., earlier this month.
In the Saturday post, Souza shared a photo from The Associated Press of Trump boarding his plane earlier that day and told users to look “closely” at the former president’s ear that was struck by a bullet during the shooting.
“AP photo this morning,” Souza wrote in his Saturday post. “Look closely at the ear that was ‘hit’ by a bullet from a 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 as he boarded the plane.
After receiving criticism online for the photo, Souza said in an Instagram post Monday that he deleted his account on X.
“So I de-activated my Twitter account. It was a gut decision, made only by me. I am still not sure if this is a temporary or a permanent action,” Souza wrote in a lengthy Instagram post.
As of Monday afternoon, Souza’s account on X says it does not exist.
Souza said his post on X received responses claiming that the photo was taken at a different time or claimed that the ear featured was not the one that was shot at. He said he responded to this criticism by sharing a post from The New York Times’s Doug Mills, which was another photo of Trump boarding the plane at the same time and place as the AP’s photo.
“Doug is one of Trump’s favorite photographers and Trump has publicly called him ‘my genius photographer.’ So I thought the maga world would at least believe Doug Mills. They didn’t. The comments turned ugly. Mostly about me, but also some that disparaged Doug Mills,” he wrote on Instagram.
He said that while he was used to receiving negative comments about himself, his posts exposed Mills “to be the recipient of hateful messages on MY Twitter account,” which he wrote was “Not cool.”
Souza also clarified that X owner Elon Musk did not remove him from the platform, as some users were suggesting. He said he received a text message from The New York Times asking if he had a comment about apparently being kicked off X.
“It was time to respond. I have so much more I want to say about the state of social media, but for now I want to make it clear that I was not kicked off Twitter. I kicked myself off,” he wrote in his Instagram post.
Speculation has swirled in the weeks following the rally shooting over whether Trump’s ear was hit by a bullet or by shrapnel after a gunman fired at him during the July 13 rally. Trump insisted that he was hit by the bullet, not glass or shrapnel, and the FBI later confirmed that it was a bullet.