PROOF: TRUMP USES AN EARPIECE!

(This is the big one, boys and girls! Original research, unavailable anywhere else! Please spread the news all over the political message boards ASAP. I don't do social media, so if you are on Facebook or Twitter, I'll be very grateful for any help you can offer.)

 

Before the first debate, Trump and the Q crowd spread the rumor that Joe Biden used an earpiece to receive messages from a hidden offstage prompter. No evidence backing this theory was offered. Apparently, the illuminated ones who believe in Q have transcended the need for mere evidence. 

 

This particular conspiracy theory was actually a heist. Q stole a riff from Yours Truly. I had sounded this very theme back in 2004: While watching the first Kerry/Bush debate, my ladyfriend spotted an inexplicable something-or-other beneath Dubya's suit jacket. I wrote about this discovery the next day. 

 

"Promptergate" (as I called it) or "The Bush Bulge" (as others called it) pretty much made this blog. For a while, my ladyfriend called herself Bulge Girl. 

 

A long series of posts followed. Although my tone was somewhere between bemused and amused, I made a sincere attempt to present actual evidence and to allow for multiple interpretations of that evidence. Bush defenders received respectful treatment in these pages. Eventually, a NASA image analyst confirmed that the "Bush bulge" was real.

 

Those Q Qreeps may have stolen my idea but they couldn't imitate my style.   

Don't mess with the O.G., folks. When it comes to the uncomfortably deep examination of political ear canals, Joseph Cannon is world-champion spelunker. 

 

I'm here to present irrefutable visual evidence that Donald Trump -- not Joe Biden -- is the one who wears an earpiece -- perhaps as a hearing aid, but more likely as a method of receiving offstage instruction.

Exhibit one is damning:

 

Yes, I know how to use Photoshop. No, I did not use that program, or any other, to alter this image. You may find the original here.  

I don't know the circumstances under which the above photograph was snapped. Trump may well have had legitimate reason to wear an earpiece on that day. But wear an earpiece he did; the photograph is beyond dispute. 

The question before us now is this: Has Trump -- on other occasions -- used a less-obvious device? A camouflaged earpiece that nestles within the ear canal? 

Before we proceed, we need to have a better idea as to what modern in-the-canal hearing aids look like. They hide between the tragus and the antitragus, they require no wires, and the best-designed ones are almost invisible. Here are several styles (gathered from various sites):

That tiny wire could be hidden with a small amount of latex or wax. Let's be clear: The images in this collection depict hearing aids, not radio transmission devices.

The technology for audio devices that transmit voices directly into your ear has become downright uncanny. Allow me to introduce you to the Monorean, a tiny wireless earpiece unashamedly advertised as a device for "cheating on tests." It communicates with your cell phone.

The pro version of the Monorean costs $599. Although one would think that a "billionaire" could afford the best, Trump -- being Trump -- probably uses a much cheaper device. Here's a slightly more apparent Bluetooth earpiece, yours for the low, low price of $38.99. 

 

This one is smaller and even less expensive, but seems to have a problem staying in the ear (or so one gathers from the reviews). I would suggest using latex or wax to solve that problem, if you're a cheap cheater. 

 

Research the matter for half an hour and you'll find a number of similar devices.

 

Now let's look at the evidence that Trump has used such a device:

That image comes from here. As they say in those YouTube "ghost" videos: Did you see it? In the interest of science, we must venture further into Donald Trump's ear, however unappetizing that task may seem. Courage, my friends...!

This image is enlarged but otherwise unretouched, though I've added a few geographical pointers for those of you who haven't made a deep study of outer ear anatomy. The intertragic notch is usually a dark, empty depression between the tragus and the anti-tragus. In an ordinary human being, the only feature one might see within this notch is the entrance to the ear canal. 

But that's not the case here. A glistening, silvery something seems to be sitting within the intertragic notch. Look closely and you'll see that this something has a clearly defined edge.

That something does not appear in all, or even most, photos of Donald Trump's left ear. Here's a comparison.

 

The second close-up photo comes from here. The third photo comes from here. The silvery something visible in the first image seems to be gone in other images.  

Admittedly, we're talking about photographs taken under different lighting conditions, though not that different: On all three occasions, the light source was in front of Trump. The important point is this: There should be nothing in the intertragic notch to catch any light, from any direction. It's a cavity.

The intertragic "extra" seems to show up in a couple of other photos. Here is a surprisingly clear shot of Trump's odd little ear-booger:

Once again, notice the well-defined edge. We are dealing with a physical artifact which contradicts our knowledge of ear anatomy. Whatever it is, it ain't natural.

 

Let me repeat my message to the Q Qretins: This is my territory. I invented the science of parapolitical ear examination back in 2004. You Qranks are just a bunch of Johnny-come-lately amateurs and poseurs.

 

Ahhhh...! Y'know, this feels right. It's so nice to be back home where I belong. 

 

"But...BIDEN!" Right now, any Q Qretins reading this article are probably dying to tell me that there's a video floating around which allegedly depicts Joe Biden wearing a wire during the first debate. I've addressed this issue in a previous post. Allow me to repeat here what I said on that earlier occasion...

Politifact says that Biden's "wire" was actually a shirt crease. I'm not convinced. One thing bugs me about the Twitter video: It's a shaky iPhone video-of-a-video. Someone pointed a cel phone camera at a teevee set.

That's a tell. 

If you've ever played with After Effects, you may know what I'm talking about. One way to hide imperfect CGI is to degrade the image by playing the video clip on a large-screen television and re-photographing it with another camera -- preferably a really crummy camera, like the one in your cel phone. That's why so many "ghost" videos on YouTube look as though they were (as the saying has it) filmed with a potato. 

Here's a famous example of what I'm talking about. That YouTube video depicts an alleged spook called the Fresno Walker. No-one has ever seen the original footage; we've only seen the video-of-a-video version. There's a reason for that.

Even if the Biden "wire" footage were on the level, I can think of a benign explanation. 

Back in 1976 -- yes, I'm old enough to recall! -- there was a technical problem with the audio during one of the debates between Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter. The microphones died. For something like twenty or thirty minutes, the two men stared ahead in silence, not talking to each other or to anyone else. Since neither man seemed particularly comfortable speaking in public, they were probably quite happy to zone out and become One With Everything. It was a very '70s interlude. 

(I used to think that the Ford-Carter encounters were the most cringe-worthy debates in history. Then Trump happened.) 

(Okay, okay: Stockdale. I've met people who knew him. Actually, Bulge Girl met him several times; she worked at a photo lab that he occasionally patronized. Apparently, he was a wonderful guy. But the TV camera was not his best friend.) 

The Ford-Carter debacle illustrates why it can be a good idea to have more than one audio feed. Even when the talent is speaking into a large, visible microphone, it's prudent to wire him or her up with a lavalier mic affixed with moleskin under the shirt. A wire from that lav would plug into a small, portable transmitter hidden in a pocket. Thus, if one audio feed fails -- as occurred during the Ford/Carter debate -- the other will still function.

Nota bene: Such a wire would run to a microphone, not to a miniature loudspeaker. (That's what an earpiece is -- a really tiny loudspeaker.) If a wire had gone all the way up into Biden's ear canal, you would have seen it. There's no way to hide something like that.