LaVar Ball, the father of one of the three UCLA basketball players arrested and detained in China, said Monday night during an interview with CNN that he’d rather thank Chinese President Xi Jinping than President Donald Trump for the release of his son.
Although Ball refused to recognize Trump’s intercession and expressed no gratitude, his son and the two other UCLA players arrested in China for shoplifting each thanked the president for his help and goodwill. Ball, the outspoken father of LiAngelo Ball, engaged in a war of words with Trump beginning on Friday when ESPN asked him about Trump’s intercession with Xi on behalf of the detained U.S. college basketball players. Ball dismissed Trump’s efforts, saying, “Who?” when asked about the president’s actions.
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“What was [Trump] over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out,” Ball, a former basketball and football player and the CEO of sports apparel company Big Baller Brand, had told ESPN.
Trump responded by tweeting Sunday that Ball “is unaccepting of what I did for his son,” adding, “I should have left them in jail!”
Ball weighed in once more during an interview Monday night with CNN’s Chris Cuomo as he again downplayed Trump’s involvement with the three players’ return home to the U.S.
“Did [Trump] help the boys get out? I don’t know. I don’t know. If I was going to thank somebody, I’d probably thank President Xi. I’d thank him. He’s in China. He’s the head, the president in China,” Ball said. “I mean somebody can make a suggestion and somebody can do something. You’ve got people who make suggestions and people who do things.”
Ball even went so far as to say that Trump did “nothing” to help secure his son’s release and return, saying that this is the reason he won’t offer any gratitude to Trump.
Related: Trump War of Words with UCLA Player’s Dad: ‘Should Have Left Them in Jail’
“You can open your eyes and see what’s going on. I’m not saying nothing to the president. I’m just saying, I’m not just saying thank you to anybody for nothing,” Ball said. “I had some things done, I talked to some people that did some other things, too.”
Ball told Cuomo that he will only say “‘Thank you’ when I see something.”
“If you help, you shouldn’t have to say anything,” Ball added. “Let [Trump] do his political affairs and let me handle my son and let’s just stay in our lane.”
(photo credit, homepage image: Donald J. Trump…, CC BY 2.0, by Michael Vadon; photo credit, article image: President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, by The Kremlin, Moscow / Donald J Trump at Marriott Marquis NYC, CC BY 2.0, by Michael Vadon)
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