Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump took to Twitter to continue to rail against LaVar Ball, the father of a UCLA basketball player who was detained for shoplifting in China.
At 5:25 am, ET, Trump rehashed his beef with Ball, who has been reluctant to thank the President for his role in his son's release from China.
"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," Trump tweeted in part.
Trump called Ball an "ungrateful fool," adding that getting his son home is "a really big deal."
The tweets come after Ball said Monday in an interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo that he didn't know what the President had done to get his son and two other UCLA basketball players out of China.
After Ball's refusal to thank Trump in an interview with ESPN a few days after the players' release, the President said he should have left the three players in jail.
"Did he help the boys get out? I don't know. ... If I was going to thank somebody I'd probably thank President Xi (Jinping)," Ball said Monday night when asked about his back-and-forth with the President by CNN's Chris Cuomo.
"It wasn't like he was in the US and said, 'OK, there's three kids in China. I need to go over and get them.' That wasn't the thought process," he told Cuomo.
Ball suggested Trump, who frequently brought up the conversation he had with Xi about the release during a trip to Asia, should stay quiet.
"If you help, you shouldn't have to say anything," he said. "Let him do his political affairs and let me handle my son and let's just stay in our lane."
