Harry Potter author and darling of the left J.K. Rowling has finally apologized (sort of) for a stunningly false tweetstorm against President Trump that racked up thousands of shares in the past three days.
Rowling’s original series of tweets on Friday called Trump “horrible” for seemingly ignoring the extended hand of a young boy confined to a wheelchair, who was visiting the White House during a July 24 “Victims of Obamacare” event.
The clip Rowling retweeted, which was deleted long before her apology came, left out the beginning of the encounter when the president payed special attention to the boy.
“That clip of Trump looking deliberately over a disabled child’s head, ignoring his outstretched hand, has touched me on the raw,” Rowling wrote in a series of now-deleted tweets. “My mother used a wheelchair. I witnessed people uncomfortable around her disability, but if they had a shred of decency they got over it. (unless related to him by ties of blood, and therefore his creations) [people are] treated with contempt, because they do not resemble Trump. This monster of narcissism values only himself and his pale reflections. The disabled, minorities, transgender people, the poor, women. Trump imitated a disabled reporter. Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition.”
As you can see in the clip below, her entire rant is based on a complete lie.
So @jk_rowling is on a tirade about how Trump ignored a kid in a wheelchair, but she conveniently left out the clip from the beginning: pic.twitter.com/v3tBXI8WY9
— エリック (@scratch_point) July 28, 2017
A woman claiming to be the mother of the boy had reportedly asked others on social media to contact Rowling and set the record straight.
“If someone can please get a message to J.K. Rowling: Trump didn’t snub my son & Monty wasn’t even trying to shake his hand,” Marjorie Kelly Weer wrote on Facebook. “(1. He’s 3 and hand shaking is not his thing, 2. he was showing off his newly acquired secret service patch). Thanks.”
Rowling tweeted the following statement Monday evening:
“Re: my tweets about the small boy in a wheelchair whose proferred hand the president appeared to ignore in press footage, multiple sources have informed me that that was not a full or accurate representation of their interaction. 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. These tweets will remain, but I will delete the previous ones on the subject.”
Notice she didn’t apologize to Trump for smearing him.
It’s also worth noting that Rowling issued multiple tweets in the time between her anti-Trump tirade and her apology, even after several high-profile critics called her out on it, including fellow British liberal Piers Morgan.
I’m not squirming.
But I will keep on this until she deletes those tweets. Using a disabled boy to falsely smear someone is disgraceful. https://t.co/HpXXjXcO58— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) July 30, 2017
It was shameful and irresponsible for such a prominent fiction writer to tweet fiction as fact and then let that lie continue to spread over the course of three days. I suppose it’s good that Rowling deleted the tweets and apologized to the boy and his family, but Trump deserves an apology, too. Any decent person would know that. But I’m not holding my breath.
Chelsea Clinton also not-so-surprisingly fell for the lie. This explanation left me asking, “Huh?”
Hello Piers-I hadn’t seen the full video until now. I removed the retweet. And, the President should have shaken the boy’s hand at the end.
— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) July 30, 2017