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J. K. Rowling Wrongly Blamed Donald Trump For Snubbing A Boy In A Wheelchair

J. K. Rowling Wrongly Blamed Donald Trump For Snubbing A Boy In A Wheelchair

J. K. Rowling has apologized for erroneously accusing President Donald Trump of refusing to shake hands with a boy who uses a wheelchair.

The Harry Potter writer criticized the president after viewing this footage of Trump seemingly refusing to shake the outstretched hand of 3-year-old Montgomery Weer after a speech on health care in the White House on July 24.

“How stunning, and how horrible, that Trump cannot bring himself to shake the hand of a small boy who only wanted to touch the president,” Rowling wrote in a series of blistering tweets on Friday.

“My mother used a wheelchair. I witnessed people uncomfortable around her disability, but if they had a shred of decency they got over it,” she added. “So, yes, that clip of Trump looking deliberately over a disabled child’s head, ignoring his outstretched hand, has touched me on the raw.”

But on Monday, the acclaimed author backtracked and admitted she’d actually only seen an edited version of the clip ― and had commented on it without knowing the full facts.

The full version of the video, below, shows how Trump actually greeted the youngster, who has spina bifida, shortly after entering the room:

After deleting her first set of tweets, Rowling posted a series of four messages in which she apologized to Weer and his family.

“I very clearly projected my own sensitivities around the issue of disabled people being overlooked or ignored onto the images I saw and if that caused any distress to that boy or his family, I apologise unreservedly,” she wrote.

She notably did not apologize to Trump himself, however ― who has previously caught heat for appearing to mock a reporter with disabilities.

Check out the tweets here:

Rowling, who has 11.4 million Twitter followers, often uses the microblogging service to blast Trump.

Most recently, she called the president out on his sexist tweets, his blocking of celebrities, his climate change policies and for tweeting in the third person.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.