A Kid With Cerebral Palsy Got Ejected From A Trump Rally. Then He Met The President.

J.J. Holmes, age 12, had two very different experiences this weekend
From: Huffington Post

On Saturday, Donald Trump ordered a 12-year-old boy with cerebral palsy out of his rally.
The next day, President Barack Obama shook hands with the boy.

Twelve-year-old J.J. Holmes begged his mother to drive him to a Donald Trump rally in Tampa, Florida, on Saturday. J.J., who has cerebral palsy, wanted to go and protest the Republican nominee’s treatment of people with disabilities.

His mother, Alison, agreed to make the trip. Once they got there, they held up a Hillary Clinton placard and chanted for the Democratic nominee, according to people who were there.

Trump quickly ordered them out of the rally. His supporters responded by “chanting ‘U-S-A’ and pushing [J.J.’s] wheelchair,” Alison told The Washington Post.

“We were put out by security,” she said. “Mr. Trump kept saying, ‘Get them out.’”

As Alison spoke to the Post reporter, J.J., speaking with the help of a computer vocalization device, interjected. “I hate Donald Trump,” he said. “I hate Donald Trump.”

Less than 24 hours after J.J. was harassed and kicked out of the Trump rally, the 12-year-old boy shook hands with President Barack Obama.

The unexpected turn of events began to unfold when a reporter who witnessed J.J.’s experience at the Trump rally called Valentina Pereda, Clinton’s press secretary in Florida.

Pereda was horrified, she wrote in a Facebook post.

“What the hell could I do to make this child even slightly forget that experience?” she said she thought.

Pereda offered to escort J.J. and Alison to Clinton’s Sunday rally in Kissimmee, Florida, where Obama was scheduled to deliver one of his final campaign speeches before Tuesday’s election.

At the rally venue, Pereda decided that the area reserved for people in wheelchairs was too far from the stage. She wanted to get J.J. closer to the president. So she led J.J. and his mother through crowds of people, across muddy turf, to the VIP area near the stage, she said.

With the help of a White House staffer friend, Pereda was able to set up a brief meeting between J.J. and Obama. After the president’s speech, Pereda’s friend escorted them to the other side of the barricades that separated rally attendees from the stage. Obama leaned forward, shook J.J.’s hand and smiled for a photo.

J.J. was ecstatic. His smile was “almost bursting out of his face,” Pereda wrote ― “His body overcome by light, when just the day before it almost succumbed to hate.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.