Well, President Donald Trump is now threatening to bare his torso to prove he’s America’s most victimized commander-in-chief.
A video of his massive threat is now circling on X. During a rambling address at the Faith & Freedom Coalition event last June, Trump delivered perhaps his most bizarre boast yet: “If I took this shirt off, you would see a beautiful beautiful person. But you would see wounds all over. I’ve taken a lot of wounds, I can tell you. More than I suspect any president ever.”
Donald Trump: "If I took this shirt off, you would see a beautiful beautiful person. But you would see wounds all over. I’ve taken a lot of wounds, I can tell you. More than I suspect any president ever." (June 2024) @Acynpic.twitter.com/EZIBdO8q8k
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) July 12, 2025
The audience, spared from what would surely have been a traumatic visual experience, was left to ponder exactly what “beautiful beautiful person” with “wounds all over” might look like. I’m personally picturing something between Michelangelo’s David and a pepperoni pizza, but that’s just me.
This latest outburst follows Trump’s July assassination attempt, where he did sustain an actual injury to his ear. While undoubtedly frightening and serious, Trump has since transformed this incident into the centerpiece of his ever-expanding martyrdom narrative.
Even Theodore Roosevelt, who survived an assassination attempt, demonstrated actual toughness rather than just talking about it—delivering a 90-minute speech with a bullet lodged in his chest, famously declaring, “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Roosevelt didn’t need to take his shirt off to prove his toughness.
But to suggest this makes Trump more “wounded” than, say, Abraham Lincoln, who literally died from a gunshot wound, or John F. Kennedy, who met the same tragic fate, is not just historically inaccurate — it’s downright offensive. This moment encapsulates so much of what we’ve come to expect from Trump. He’s not content to simply say he’s faced challenges; he has to position himself as the ultimate victim, the most persecuted, the most aggrieved. It’s a narrative that plays well with his base, who see him as a modern-day David battling a Goliath-sized “deep state.” But for anyone with even a passing knowledge of history — or, frankly, a shred of common sense — it’s hard to take him seriously.
