I should have left them in jail, says Trump
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US President Donald Trump says he should have left three UCLA basketball players accused of shoplifting in China in jail.
His Sunday tweet came after the father of player LiAngelo Ball minimized Trump’s involvement in winning the players’ release in comments to ESPN.
“Who?” LaVar Ball told ESPN when asked about Trump’s involvement. “What was he over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.”
Trump said he raised the players’ detention with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the leaders met in Beijing.
The players returned to the US last week but have been indefinitely suspended from the team.
Trump tweeted: “Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal.
“I should have left them in jail!”
He later tweeted: “Shoplifting is a very big deal in China, as it should be (five to 10 years in jail), but not to father LaVar. Should have gotten his son out during my next trip to China instead. China told them why they were released. Very ungrateful!”
Arrested, questioned
The younger Ball, along with fellow freshmen Jalen Hill and Cody Riley, were arrested and questioned about stealing from high-end stores next to the team’s hotel in Hangzhou, where the Bruins stayed before leaving for Shanghai to play Georgia Tech.
UCLA athletics director Dan Guerrero said last week that the players stole from three stores.
“As long as my boy’s back here, I’m fine,” LaVar Ball told ESPN. “I’m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, ‘They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes.’
“I’m from LA. I’ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses.
“My son has built up enough character that one bad decision doesn’t define him. Now if you can go back and say when he was 12 years old he was shoplifting and stealing cars and going wild, then that’s a different thing.
“Everybody gets stuck on the negativity of some things and they get stuck on them too long. That’s not me. I handle what’s going on and then we go from there.”
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, retweeted Trump’s tweet and included his own comment.
He wrote: “The President would have left American students in a foreign jail because their families didn’t lavish sufficient praise on him. How can someone in such a big office be so small?”
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