Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president was in fact “happy to intervene” and assist in the UCLA players' release during a diplomatic trip in Asia earlier this month. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images White House pushes back against father of UCLA player released from China

LaVar Ball “didn’t seem like [he] wanted the president to intervene” when his son, a UCLA basketball player, was arrested by Chinese authorities overseas earlier this month, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday.

President Donald Trump on Sunday called the college athletes charged with shoplifting while traveling abroad “very ungrateful” after LaVar Ball, the outspoken father of UCLA guard LiAngelo Ball, one of three players from the squad briefly held in China, made critical remarks of the president’s response to the incident. “I should have left them in jail!” he tweeted.


Sanders on Monday cast the remarks as a “rhetorical response to a criticism by the father,” saying the president was in fact “happy to intervene” and assist in the players' release during a diplomatic trip in Asia earlier this month.

“I think it was less about the players than the father of one of the Americans released seemed to have a problem with it,” Sanders said, in a reference to LaVar Ball.

She added: “Frankly, it didn’t seem like the father wanted the president to intervene, which I think would’ve been a sad thing if he hadn’t, most likely.”

The White House press secretary added the president’s actions — in urging Chinese leader Xi Jinping to resolve the issue with the UCLA players — should speak louder than his tweets.

Sanders said if Trump didn’t want to see them returned home, “He wouldn’t have taken the action that he did.”

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Trump on Sunday reignited the controversy surrounding the players’ release after LaVar Ball had downplayed the president’s role in the process. “Everybody wants to make it seem like he helped me out,” Ball told ESPN on Friday.

The president responded on Twitter by taking shots at the father.

“Now that the three basketball players are out of China and saved from years in jail, LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, is unaccepting of what I did for his son and that shoplifting is no big deal. I should have left them in jail!” he tweeted.

Trump had previously criticized the players themselves for not properly thanking him for helping to secure their release. The UCLA players directly thanked the president shortly afterward during a news conference.

