President Donald Trump says he should have left three UCLA basketball players accused of shoplifting in China in jail.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s tweet Sunday comes after the father of player LiAngelo Ball minimized Trump\u2019s involvement in winning the players\u2019 release in comments to ESPN.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho?\u201dLaVar Ball told ESPN on Friday, when asked about Trump\u2019s involvement in the matter. \u201cWhat was he over there for? Don\u2019t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has said he raised the players\u2019 detention with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the leaders\u2019 recent meeting in Beijing.<\/p>\n
The players returned to the U.S. last week. They have been indefinitely suspended from the team.<\/p>\n
Says Trump: \u201cNow 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!\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump later tweeted: \u201cShoplifting is a very big deal in China, as it should be (5-10 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!\u201d<\/p>\n
The younger Ball, along with fellow freshmen Jalen Hill and Cody Riley, aren\u2019t with the rest of the No. 23 Bruins, who are in Kansas City to play in the Hall of Fame Classic on Monday and Tuesday. The trio isn\u2019t allowed to suit up, be on the bench for home games or travel with the team.<\/p>\n
The players were arrested and questioned about stealing from high-end stores next to the team\u2019s hotel in Hangzhou, where the Bruins stayed before leaving for Shanghai to play Georgia Tech.<\/p>\n
UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero said last week that the players stole from three stores.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as my boy\u2019s back here, I\u2019m fine,\u201d LaVar Ball told ESPN. \u201cI\u2019m 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.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m from LA. I\u2019ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. My son has built up enough character that one bad decision doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s a different thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody gets stuck on the negativity of some things and they get stuck on them too long. That\u2019s not me. I handle what\u2019s going on and then we go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors coach who has been critical of Trump, talked about the situation Sunday before his team\u2019s game in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo people seeking attention and they\u2019re both getting it, so I\u2019m sure both guys are really happy,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cYou know what would help? If all of you just stopped covering both of them. Is that possible? You could probably stop covering LaVar. I don\u2019t think you can stop covering the president. I don\u2019t think that will work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump says he should have left three UCLA basketball players accused of shoplifting in China in jail. Trump\u2019s tweet Sunday comes after the father of player LiAngelo Ball minimized Trump\u2019s involvement in winning the players\u2019 release in comments to ESPN. \u201cWho?\u201dLaVar Ball told ESPN on Friday, when asked about Trump\u2019s involvement in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10669,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667\/revisions\/10669"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}