Someone just tried to assassinate Trump

[Suppressed Poet]

I don't know. It could have been a piece of metal, wood or glass blown out by a bullet impact, which as you know is a type of shrapnel. Or it possibly could have been a piece of a fragmented bullet. Or it might have been a direct impact from a ninth bullet. Why does it matter? I'm not sure. Criminal investigators always want to track down those details. Recreating the paths of small objects moving at high speed cannot be easy, especially when the investigation is begun hours after the incident with hundreds of people having moved about at the scene.

Neither of us are working with any evidence, but I find it highly unlikely that the bullet first impacted some other medium of metal, glass, or wood before reaching the target given the line of sight between the shooter & Trump. Another medium fragmenting and causing damage to a target is referred to as spalling.

The most logical explanation is a bullet directly impacted his ear. The alternative is that the bullet flew past Trump, hit a sufficiently hard and dense material, and that caused the bullet to ricochet back striking Trump in the ear.

As mentioned, it really doesn’t matter. Trump narrowly escaped death and was injured in the assassination attempt. Your posting history, intentionally or not, seems to downplay the gravity of danger to Trump and the existence of an injury to his ear.