Trump Inspires Cultlike Accessory at RNC

A new trend is sweeping the Republican National Convention, and it’s exactly as silly-looking as it sounds: Delegates and spectators have started sporting bulky ear bandages to copy Donald Trump.

Trump made waves on Monday when he appeared at the RNC with a bandage over his right ear. Two days earlier, an attempt on the former president’s life at a rally in Pennsylvania had left him mostly unharmed, except for a gash to his ear caused by a near-miss bullet. Trump’s former doctor Representative Ronny Jackson said the bullet took “a little bit” of his ear off.

It didn’t take long before the copycat bandages started popping up around Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum. The Daily Beast reported spotting multiple people sporting them.

Joe Neglia, a delegate from Arizona who appeared to have taped a square of paper to the side of his head, told CBS News it was “the newest fashion trend.”

“Everybody in the world is going to be wearing these pretty soon,” Neglia said, explaining that he’d folded a piece of paper to wear while on the bus ride in.

“It’s just in sympathy with Donald Trump,” Neglia told Sam Levine of The Guardian. “I saw that man get shot; I thought, that man has almost given his life for his country; he deserves some respect for that.”

Stacey Goodman, another Arizona delegate who’d taped paper to the side of her head, said that it was “done in solidarity with my president, Trump, not the current thing that’s in the administration.”

The faux bandages are a testament to just how quickly political violence can be meme-ified, and how willing Trump’s followers are to follow him off whatever bridge he decides to jump from. Luckily, this one isn’t very high; it’s just stupid.