Basketball players detained in China

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By VERONICA SPAGNA

A lot of attention has been brought upon an international incident occurred this week in China. Three freshman UCLA basketball players were accused of shoplifting items from three different stores, including a pair of sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store, ranging from $435-$1,990.

The basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley, returned to Los Angeles Tuesday, where they were Initially ignoring all questions asked by reporters.

Donald Trump was involved in resolving the issue, by bringing up the case with China’s President Xi Jinping, allowing the players to get out of China’s detention and back in the United States.

We seem to be more than familiar with Donald Trump’s tweeting habits. He uses Twitter as a way praising himself, demanding praise and judging others for not giving him approval. On Tuesday, when the basketball players returned from China after being detained for 10 days and did not express any gratitude towards Donald Trump, he decided to tweet:

First of all this tweet demonstrates the president’s lack of modesty and talking about himself in the third person, like the CNN reporter said, “that deserves a post all its own. This tweet was given a lot of attention by the news media as it is put the UCLA players in an awkward position, after already being in one.

Some reporters, such as CNN’s Chris Cillizza, suggested that people were interpreting this tweet as racially provocative, he wrote in his article “What Donald Trump’s UCLA tweet reveals about him.”

“That the three players are all young black men should also not be lost here. Trump’s history on racial issues — both as president and as a private citizen — shows some level of intentionality when it comes to using racially coded language and taking advantage of racial animus and stereotypes for his own political gain,” Cillizza wrote.
“The image of an older white man in a position of power demanding thanks from three young black men for saving them will set off a lot of alarm bells for people,” he added.

The players apologized for their actions in a press conference, in addition to thanking Donald Trump and the U.S. government for helping them out of the situation.   The three players have been suspended indefinitely from the UCLA, meaning that they won’t be able to practice or travel with the university’s team.

Donald Trump acknowledged the thanks shared by the basketball players and answered by tweeting

Most articles covering this story linked the video of the conference where the players apologized for their actions, giving the reader a clearer understanding of the events.

The story was covered in detail by the reporters, but there were no real comments made by UCLA students. It would be interesting to know how students at UCLA feel about the story and its effects on the name and reputation of the school and its basketball program.

When covering the story, Reporters were very harsh on Donald Trump’s tweets because they attacked some freshman students who did not even have the time to settle back in their home country after being detained in a foreign country.