J.K. Rowling has taken to Twitter to apologise over her false claims that Donald Trump refused to shake a disabled boy's hand.
In a series of tweets, the author lambasted the President for what she said was "looking deliberately over a disabled child's head, ignoring his outstretched hand".
However, footage shows that he did shake the child's hand, and the clip J.K. Rowling tweeted simply showed the boy waving his secret service patch.
Today on Twitter, she explained how she was wrong and apologised to the boy and his family.
Re: my tweets about the small boy in a wheelchair whose proferred hand the president appeared to ignore in press footage, multiple /1
Earlier, J.K. Rowling was criticised by the mother of the disabled child.
A woman claiming to be the boy's mother wrote on Facebook: "Ummmm...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.
"(1. He's 3 and hand shaking is not his thing, 2. he was showing off his newly acquired secret service patch). Thanks".
A woman claiming to be the mother of the child posted. Photo / Facebook
J.K. Rowling had written: "Trump imitated a disabled reporter. Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition.
"This monster of narcissism values only himself and his pale reflections. The disabled, minorities, transgender people, the poor, women (unless related to him by ties of blood, and therefore his creations) are treated with contempt, because they do not resemble Trump.
"My mother used a wheelchair. 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.
"That man occupies the most powerful office in the free world and his daily outrages against civilised norms are having a corrosive effect.
"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."
