The story is well known. Three UCLA basketball players were detained in China on suspicion of shoplifting. They were subsequently released after a couple of weeks of house arrest in their hotel with no charges being filed. Trump has taken credit for their release and has expressed petulant anger that his efforts were not fully appreciated. The notoriously bombastic father of one of the players, Lavar Ball, refused to kowtow to The Donald and downplayed Trump’s role in the whole episode. Of course, this brought an immediate response from Trump, who could not abide the thought of a person of color not showing their absolute subservience to the plantation master or acknowledge his greatness. In typical presidential style Trump tweeted “It wasn’t the White House, it wasn’t the State Department, it wasn’t father LaVar’s so-called people on the ground in China that got his son out of a long term prison sentence – IT WAS ME. Too bad! LaVar is just a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair. Just thin LaVar, you could have spent the next 5 to 10 years during Thanksgiving with your son in China, but no NBA contract to support you. But remember LaVar, shoplifting is NOT a little thing. It’s a really big deal, especially in China. Ungrateful fool!”
Now the New York Times has put some perspective on this matter
But experts say the players for the UCLA team, who were accused of stealing sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store in Hangzhou China, probably would have been release even if Mr. Trump had not raised the case with President Xi Jinping during a visit this month to Bejing.
Shoplifting is considered a relatively minor crime in China, and foreigners convicted of minor crimes are often deported rather than given prison sentences.
“It’s nonsense, “ Fu Hualing, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, said of Mr. Trump’s assertion that his intervention was solely responsible for the athletes’ release. “ I would be surprised if they were even prosecuted.”
The Times goes on to point out that by focusing on a relatively trivial incident, in which Presidential intervention was probably unnecessary, Trump squandered an opportunity to help free Chinese dissidents, lawyers, journalists and scholars facing far harsher sentences or constraints on their freedoms.
So much for the great negotiator...