Was Former White House Photographer Pete Souza's X Account Deleted After His Trump Post?

In the weeks following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13 — during which one rally-goer was killed and two others were seriously injured — there has been a lot of chatter online about whether it was actually a bullet that hit the former president's ear.

More conspiracies erupted on July 27, after former White House photographer Pete Souza posted a tweet related to the ongoing speculation about the shooting — only for Pete's account to seemingly be deleted afterward.

So what's going on, exactly? Let's break it down.

On July 27, Pete tweeted out an AP photo from that day, in which there's a clear view of Trump's seemingly unmarked right ear. "AP photo this morning," he captioned it, according to reposted screenshots. "Look closely at his ear that was 'hit' by a bullet from an AR-15 assault rifle."

But as fellow X (formerly Twitter) user and journalist David Leavitt tweeted out later that day: "Renowned photojournalist and White House photographer 'no longer exists' on Twitter after posting an AP picture of Donald Trump." David posted a screenshot of Pete's tweet, along with a screenshot of an error message that apparently popped up when he tried to access Pete's account.

Folks sounded off in the comments under David's tweet, with several users claiming that this was evidence of a cover-up on Trump's part, or even X owner Elon Musk's part.

"Elon celebrating free speech once again," one person wrote, while another commented about Trump: "100 percent confirms that he took no bullet and that he's covering it up."

Some folks indicated that none of this necessarily meant that Pete's account was forcibly suspended, but that rather he might have decide to intentionally deactivate his own account. At this point it's unclear what actually happened, but that hasn't stopped folks from continuing to speculate.