Mary Katharine Ham:
Three University of California at Los Angeles basketball players are back home in the United States today after being detained for about a week in China for alleged shoplifting. President Donald Trump’s intervention on their behalf with Chinese President Xi Jinping led to their release.
Cody Riley, Jalen Hill, and LiAngelo Ball, the younger brother of Lakers rookie Lonzo Ball, were facing the Chinese legal system and the possibility of several years in prison after being charged with shoplifting from a Louis Vuitton store during a team trip to China. The three men were released from jail and detained in their Hangzhou hotel in what some saw as a goodwill gesture as Trump arrived. They were back home Tuesday after Trump and Xi had what the president called a “great conversation.”
This story was not afforded the ESPN and national news orgy of congratulations it would have occasioned had President Obama gotten three basketball players out of an authoritarian state with relative ease. Trump tweeted wondering if the players would thank him, leading to a lot of coverage of the tone of his tweet, perhaps more coverage than the fact he had indeed personally intervened to get three Americans home safely.
Later the same day, the players did thank him and apologized for their behavior in China.
“I would like to thank President Trump and the United States government for the help they provided. I am grateful to be back home and I will never make a mistake like this again. I am extremely sorry for those that I let down,” said Ball, reading a prepared statement.
I’m grateful they’re back home, too. They are suspended from the basketball team indefinitely, and Trump has tweeted his hopes they live “a great life.” Somewhere between President Harry S. Truman’s admonition about how much you can get done if you don’t care who gets the credit and Trump’s tweeting for thanks probably lies a reasonable presidential posture, but Trump does deserve credit.
It’s not the first time Trump has taken an active role in the release of American prisoners overseas during his first year as president. In fact, his record on this front reflects a string of overlooked or lightly covered victories, and highlights a difference in approach and results from the Obama presidency before his. Known for his “America First” rhetoric, Trump’s administration seems to take a genuine interest in “Americans First” on human-rights issues and prisoners.
In April, the administration secured the release of Egyptian-American charity worker Aya Hijazi, 30, from an Egyptian prison where she had been held on widely discredited charges since 2014. Hijazi and her Egyptian husband ran a charity that rehabilitated and housed Cairo’s homeless street children, and their imprisonment along with four coworkers became a symbol of the Egyptian government’s crackdown.
They bounced around the Egyptian legal system for three years and human-rights workers alleged they were abused in jail. Despite pleas from the Obama administration, it was “months of backroom negotiations between the Trump administration and representatives of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi” that spurred her eventual acquittal and return to the United States.
The change was likely spurred by Trump’s change in tone to al-Sissi, whom he welcomed to White House in early April. It was a shift from the Obama administration’s approach, which was to keep the former military leader at arm’s length after he executed a military coup in 2013 to overthrow Mohamed Morsi. Despite many human-rights abuses, Trump made the decision to embrace the leader as a strategic partner in fighting terror, and said al-Sissi was doing a “fantastic job in a very difficult situation.”
The administration said there was no quid pro quo for Hijazi’s release, and Trump personally oversaw her trip back to the United States, sending his military aide and Egyptian-born deputy national security adviser Dina Powell to escort the party home, then welcoming them to the Oval Office.
Also in April, Sandy Phan-Gillis, an American citizen held in China on espionage charges without a trial for two years was deported back to the United States. Negotiations for her release had picked up during Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Beijing in March. Phan-Gillis had been accused of helping the FBI capture Chinese spies, a story her husband Jeff Gillis called “ridiculous,” and she was held in secret locations and solitary confinement during her detention, according to human-rights watchers.
Again, the release of the prisoner followed a warming in relations between Trump and an authoritarian leader—Xi Jinping, whom he had welcomed to Mar-a-Lago in Florida in April, calling him a “very good man” he believed was “trying very hard.” Sen. Ted Cruz praised Trump’s “leadership” on behalf of Phan-Gillis, whose husband fought for her release from their home in Houston, Texas.
One of these three knuckleheads has a father as stupid as he is.
Dad equated shoplifting HERE with in China!
As if the punishments would be similar.
Poor dad.
I doubt anyone in his inner circle knows any better.
Obama either never bothered to try to get any of these hostages released or failed so miserably that he kept it secret. Either outcome is disgusting. Trump shows what a leader that is proud and not afraid of US power can accomplish.