J.K. Rowling apologizes for her tweets about Donald Trump and child in a wheelchair

Image: John Phillips/Getty Images

J.K. Rowling knows how to tweet up a storm, especially regarding Donald Trump. But she made a mistake Friday and now she’s apologized for it.  

She initially retweeted and criticized the president over a video of what appeared to be Trump ignoring a child in a wheelchair—only the complete video shows a different story.  

"Trump imitated a disabled reporter. Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition," Rowling initially wrote in now-deleted tweets, referring to the footage that shows Trump ignoring the outstretched hand of a child in a wheelchair. A different clip that circulated online in response to Rowling's tweets shows Trump speaking with the child. 

The Harry Potter author has since backtracked on her tweets, explaining in a series of posts that she had spoken to people who told her about the actual encounter between Trump and the child, and apologized to the boy 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 explained. "These tweets will remain, but I will delete the previous ones on the subject."

You can see Rowling's thread of tweets below. 

Ansel Herz, the man who originally shared the abbreviated clip of Trump and the children, also apologized for sharing the video. "Deleted an earlier tweet because it turned out to be missing some context. Apologies," Herz wrote

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