Less than a week after saying "you're welcome" to the three UCLA college basketball players arrested for shoplifting, Donald Trump apparently now wishes he could take it all back.
Taking to Twitter this morning, the US president expressed his displeasure with celebrity basketball shoe entrepreneur LaVar Ball, whose son LiAngelo was released from China last week along with teammates Cody Riley and Jalen Hill. Just days ago, LaVar downplayed Trump's role in their release. (Trump claims he personally lobbied Chinese President Xi Jinping to release the trio during his trip to Beijing earlier this month).
"Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball... is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal," he wrote. "I should have left them in jail!"
Hours later, he tweeted about it again, saying: "Shoplifting is a very big deal in China... but not to father LaVar. Should have gotten his son out during my next trip to China instead... Very ungrateful!"
The tweets appear to be in response to LaVar's remarks on the incident with ESPN over the weekend, in which he downplayed the President's role in their release:
"'Who?' LaVar Ball told ESPN on Friday, when asked about Trump's involvement in the matter. 'What was he over there for? Don't tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out.'
LaVar also responded to today's tweets, questioning why Trump wasn't "focused on more important things," according to Good Morning America host Michael Del Moro.
The three players, who have been suspended by UCLA, apologized for their behavior and thanked the President and US and Chinese governments during a press conference last week.
Meanwhile, the cases of two other jailed Americans have been brought into the spotlight in the wake of last week's high-profile scandal.
Mark Swidan and Wendell Brown, two other Americans jailed in China
In a harrowing report published last week, Yahoo Sports writer Dan Wetzel profiled Wendell Brown, a 30-year-old Detroit native and former college football star who's been behind bars in Chongqing for over a year, even though family and friends are saying he's innocent:
"Life was great until September 24, 2016, when Brown attended a birthday party for a friend at a bar. As Wendell’s side tells it, he struggled to blend in when out on the town because many Chinese assumed he was either rich or famous. That night some men wanted to drink with him, but Brown declined. They got angry and a dispute broke out. Brown was later arrested for hitting a man. Brown claimed he never hit anyone and only raised his arms to block bottles being thrown at him.
"Regardless, Brown was taken to the Chongqing Jiangbei detention center. He had never before been arrested. Faced with no American-style bail available, no discovery process about the evidence against him and a confusing array of laws that bear little resemblance to the United States, he’s spent the past 14 months in a Chinese jail...
"The family was helpless. They were unable to have any contact with Wendell. Letters to and from that contained much information about the case were intercepted. They hired a lawyer in China, who was allowed to speak with him, but then was told that the way for this to end was to come up with USD100,000 as restitution. [Stepfather Travon King] is a barber and [mother Antoinette Brown] a hairstylist, co-owners of the small Kingz & Queenz Salon on Gratiot in this hard-hit city. Men’s haircuts start as low as USD5.
“'There was no way,' King said."
Down in Guangdong province, 42-year-old Mark Swidan has been in jail for five years and also can't afford bail. As Newsweek's Jeff Stein details:
"The... Houstonian, a roving artist, photographer and aspiring businessman, was picked up in southern China [five] years ago on suspicion of being involved in a methamphetamine drug conspiracy. He was confined without bail for a year before being tried in a case in which the evidence against him was circumstantial at best, his advocates say. Now [four] years have passed, with judges repeatedly postponing a verdict—a possible sign, some close observers say, that the authorities may be troubled by the case. 'The evidence against him is very flimsy,' says John Kamm, who runs a San Francisco foundation that focuses on human rights violations in China."
The families of Brown and Swidan have set up GoFundMe donation pages to bring the two back home. Here's the page for Brown, and here's the page for Swidan.
[Images via Twitter, China Daily, GoFundMe]
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