On Nov. 6, UCLA basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were arrested while on the team’s preseason exhibition game in Shanghai, China for shoplifting from three stores near their team hotel in Hangzhou, China, according to Sports Illustrated.

According to Yahoo Sports, the players were headed for 3-10 years in jail.

During this time, U.S. President Donald Trump was also coincidentally in China and reached out to the President of China, Xi Jinping, and asked him to release the players. The players had a press conference where they apologized for their actions and thanked President Trump.

The three players are currently suspended indefinitely from the UCLA basketball team, with one player, Ball, dropping out of the university.

Five days after their return, Ball’s father Lavar Ball spoke out on the situation, saying “Who? What was he over there for? Don’t tell me nothing. Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out,” in response to being asked about Trump’s role in his son’s release. This sparked tensions between Trump and Lavar Ball, with Trump firing back at Ball over twitter calling Ball “very ungrateful” and saying “I should have left them in jail.”

What the three UCLA players did was wrong, and there is no way to justify their actions, which showed extremely poor judgement. Having said that, they did act correctly following the crime and upon returning to the U.S.

Not that they had a choice, but the UCLA players complied fully with Chinese authorities, and back home they did the right thing in publicly apologizing for their actions and thanking the president for helping them. 

It is the resulting disagreement between Lavar Ball and President Trump that is ridiculous. 

If Lavar Ball cares about his son, he should feel extremely grateful to the President for taking action in expediting the release of his son when he was quite possibly facing 3-10 years in Chinese jail. If he should be mad at anybody, it should be his own son, who decided to steal from multiple stores in China.

Also note the Ball family has their own brand and is extremely wealthy, so if LiAngelo really wanted a Louis Vuitton pair of sunglasses or pretty much anything else, it is reasonable to guess he would easily be able to afford it.

The fact that his son returned home safely eight days after being arrested is remarkable, when any other U.S. citizen in his position would most likely have been subject to the harsh prison punishment of 3-10 years. Ball should be celebrating from the rooftops for his son’s safe return with no legal punishment.

As for President Trump, it is ridiculous that he is getting into an argument with Ball. Yes, he was right to expect a show of gratitude from the players, which he received. After that, he should let the subject drop. He is the President of the United States of America, his job is to serve our people, and yes he went a little extra to do this, but this was an extenuating circumstance.

There are many other issues President Trump should be worried about rather than a disagreement with Lavar Ball, one American citizen. Spending his time tweeting about it is a waste when there are so many other things to fix in the U.S. Countrywide problems such as poverty and healthcare are two of many glaring issues which carry so much weight and need much more attention from our president.

As a citizen of the U.S., when I see the president involved in a trivial argument like this, I am discouraged when I know there are other things he could be doing to improve our country. I understand he did a good deed in helping the players return, but he should have moved on much sooner.