The war of words between US President Donald Trump and LaVar Ball escalated today after the celebrity basketball shoe entrepreneur and reality show star addressed their public spat in a lengthy interview with CNN.
Ball, whose son LiAngelo was released from China last week along with UCLA basketball teammates Cody Riley and Jalen Hill after being arrested for shoplifting in Hangzhou, was blasted by Trump yesterday for downplaying the President's role in their return. (Trump claims he personally lobbied Chinese President Xi Jinping to release the trio during his trip to Beijing earlier this month).
The shoplifting trio apologized and thanked the President during a press conference at UCLA last week.
Responding to Trump's tweets that he "should have left them in jail," LaVar repeatedly refused to thank the President during a heated interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo.
"Did he help the boys get out? I don't know," said Ball. "If I was going to thank somebody I'd probably thank President Xi (Jinping)."
Addressing Trump's role in the situation, Ball said:
"Just because people say things, they're supposed to be true? Like he stopped them from [serving] 10 years? Maybe we were doing some talking with some other people before he even got there...
"I had some people that had boots on the ground that knew the situation when we first jumped on there. I keep those people in mind."
Here are some other quote highlights from Ball's interview:
"It wasn't like he was in the US and said, 'OK, there's three kids in China. I need to go over and get them.' That wasn't the thought process."
"[LiAngelo] fessed up to it. ... It was an impulse thing, a bad decision at a bad time, that's all it was for an 18-year-old who never done anything wrong."
"I say thank you when I see something."
"If you help, you shouldn't have to say anything. Let him do his political affairs and let me handle my son and let's just stay in our lane."
"Why did he respond? Why would I be in war with a guy (who is) the most powerful man in the world?"
"Why are we even talking about this with all these political matters going on in the world?"
"I would have said 'thank you' if he put him on his plane and took him home. Then I would have said, 'Thank you, Mr. Trump, for taking my boys out of China and bringing them back to the US.' There's a lot of room on that plane. I would have said, thank you kindly for that."
"Let me ask you this question. He's not an opponent, because I don't know Trump like that. I haven't done anything to him. He hasn’t done anything to me. So, I don't consider him an opponent. I just consider him a human being, and the President of the United States."
Ball finished off the bizarre segment by wishing Trump a happy Thanksgiving.
The live televised interview lit up Twitter and was one of the hottest topics among American users this morning.
Trump's tweets appeared to be in response to LaVar's remarks on the incident with ESPN over the weekend, in which he minimized 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 the tweets yesterday, 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.
As we noted yesterday, the cases of two other jailed Americans have resurfaced in light of the high-profile scandal.
Mark Swidan and Wendell Brown, two other Americans jailed in China
In a harrowing feature published last week, Yahoo Sports writer Dan Wetzel profiled Wendell Brown, a 30-year-old Detroit native and former football star who's been behind bars in Chongqing for 14 months. But family and friends insist 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... 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."
Meanwhile, 42-year-old Mark Swidan has been in jail for five years in Guangdong. His family has also struggled to pay for his bail. Newsweek's Jeff Stein reports:
"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.
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