One talent that President Donald Trump seems to have in abundance is the ability to incite wild, over the top reactions to the various things he says and does. Such as the case with J.K. Rowling, the author of the beloved Harry Potter series of young adult novels. Rowling came upon a YouTube video of the president at a recent event where he seemed to snub a small child who was in a wheelchair. She let loose an epic "tweet storm" that started, “Trump imitated a disabled reporter. Now he pretends not to see a child in a wheelchair, as though frightened he might catch his condition.” She went on at length in the same vein.
However, there was just one problem. The video was edited to leave out a crucial detail.
What really happened at the Trump event
The edited version of the video, as shown below, shows the child trying to reach up to shake the president’s hand and being ignored, a shocking case of discourtesy to be sure. However, the edited video, about 25 seconds long, was from a larger event in which President Trump excoriated Obamacare, featuring some of the victims of the law, and urged the Senate to pass a repeal and replace measure. The unedited video shows the president entering the stage and the first thing he does is to bend down and have a brief conversation with the child in the wheel chair.
Tweeting before thinking
The president has been rightly criticized for his habit of tweeting before thinking. However, it appears that Rowling, who holds herself in high regard, shares this tendency with Trump. She clearly does not have enough internet savviness to realize that not everything one sees on the Web is real. She saw the edited video, and she screamed and leaped.
Trump derangement syndrome
Rowling suffers from a condition that is commonly referred to as Trump Derangement Syndrome. Even though she is a British citizen, Rowling was a warm supporter of Hillary Clinton in the last presidential election and was quite willing to overlook her various faults and shortcomings as a result. On the other hand, everything about Trump seems to set her off.
When her time would be better spent writing the next story in the Potterverse, she is on Twitter making a fool of herself.
What about Charlie Gard, J.K.?
The reaction on Twitter has been, to put it mildly, unkind. A large number of people, many of them disappointed Harry Potter fans, took Rowling to task and demanded that she apologize. As of this writing, she has failed to do so.
Some respondents were cheeky enough to bring up the case of Charlie Gard, the sick British baby who was “allowed to die” on orders of the National Health Service. Rowling has been silent on the issue that has rocked Great Britain and the entire world. It should be noted that what happened to Charlie went far beyond a snub. Rowling, in her "tweet storm," quoted Maya Angelou as saying, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Indeed.
