Donald Trump Demands UCLA Players Thank Him For Acting Presidential

Donald Trump managed to score a small, but genuine, positive foreign policy accomplishment for the United States this week.

But he immediately tainted it by trying to make the entire affair about himself and implying the people he helped were ingrates.

Following an incident in which three UCLA basketball players — LiAngelo Ball, Cody Riley, and Jalen Hill — were detained by the Chinese government on shoplifting charges, Trump and State Department diplomats appealed to Chinese President Xi Jinping to broker their release — after which they were allowed to return home, New York Times reported.

This is standard diplomatic wrangling for a U.S. president. A normal leader would respond by expressing his own gratitude and relief that an international incident was averted and his citizens were unharmed.

Instead, Trump immediately leapt on Twitter and demanded the UCLA players thank him for deigning to do his job:

Do you think the three UCLA Basketball Players will say thank you President Trump? They were headed for 10 years in jail!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2017

Never mind that the basketball players’ athletic conference already issued a statement thanking Trump and the State Department.

Trump has repeatedly tried to demand credit for things that he simply should do as a matter of course. In some of his White House meetings, he has demanded that each Cabinet member go around the table and say something nice about him, and his presidential daily briefings are peppered with positive headlines about him fished for by White House staff.

Source: ourvoiceny