JK Rowling backtracks on anti-trump Twitter tirade

● Harry Potter author tweeted after seeing edited footage of president

JK Rowling has apologised for accusing President Donald Trump of ignoring a disabled child.

The Harry Potter author had called the US leader “horrible” after a video clip appeared to show the US leader refusing to shake the boy’s hand at a White House event last week.

“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 tweeted to her 11 million followers on Monday.

“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 also tweeted her mother had used a wheelchair and “I witnessed people uncomfortable around her disability, but if they had a shred of decency they got over it.

“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 Marjorie Kelly Weer, whose son Monty Rowling was referring to, corrected the author on Facebook.

Ms Weer wrote: “If someone can please get a message to JK Rowling: Trump didn’t snub my son & Monty wasn’t even trying to shake his hand.”

“He’s 3 and hand shaking is not his thing, He was showing off his newly acquired secret

0 JK Rowling has said sorry to Donald Trump over three-year-old Monty Weer service patch.” Rowling had seen an edited video on Twitter, but a longer video showed Trump, who was due to make a speech on Obamacare, walking into the room and stopping to bend down to welcome Monty, making him the first person he spoke to in the room.

Rowling “apologised unreservedly” in a series of Twitter posts.

She wrote: “Re: my tweets about the small boy in a wheelchair whose proffered hand the president appeared to ignore in press footage.

“Multiple sources have informed me 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.”

Rowling has deleted her original tweets on the subject.

But she has not apologised to Mr Trump himself.

In May Rowling was criticised by best-selling novelist Joanna Trollope who compared her to Kim Kardashian West for her “insatiable” appetite for social media.