Donald Trump bitterly regrets his commitment to the release of the US basketball players arrested in China:”I should have kept them in prison,”the president rained on Sunday at Twitter.
From Trump’s point of view, the father of one of the three college athletes who are said to have been caught shoplifting had not expressed his gratitude.
LaVar Ball, a former basket and football player himself, said in an interview on Friday that it was “a lot of noise about nothing”. The father of Lakers player Lonzo Ball said,”I’m from LA. I’ve seen worse things than a guy stealing sunglasses.”
Trump campaigned for the release of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s younger son LiAngelo, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, who were released on 7 July. The charges of shoplifting had been arrested in Hangzhou on 11 November. All three of them are said to have stolen sunglasses in a store of a luxury brand.
The UCLA team from Los Angeles, California, played the season’s opening game against Georgia Tech University in Shanghai, the nearby business metropolis. Shoplifting can be punished in China with prison sentences of several years. On their return to the US, the trio had apologized and thanked Trump for his intervention.