How they vote on issues, this is a spiritual fight. Wherever you go, if you take a stand youre going to come under persecution. The one person who is not leaving moores side is steve bannon. Sources tell nbc news that the breitbart ceo continues to call the allegations fake news and that he see this is moment as similar to the period when the access Hollywood Tape broke. Where does President Trump stand and what happens when alabamas voters have their say . Lets get to reporters covering this developing story. Kristen welker is at the white house and nbcs kasie hunt is on capitol hill. Kristen, when what are you expecting from the president . He said he was going to make a statement when he came back from asia, hes back from asia. What are you hearing . Well, i just heard he is going to talk some time today, i dont know if hell talk about the roy moore scandal. Reporters will do their best to shout some questions at him. Where does he stand right now . I think the sean hannity remarks were telling, the fact that you have hannity saying, look, you have 24 hours to explain the inconsistencies and if that cant happen him kristen, im sorry to interrupt you and were going to come back to this topic in just a moment but the lauch players are back from asia. Im going to start off by saying how embarrassed and i shamed i am for disappointed my family, my teammates, my coaches and the entire ucla community. I feel terrible and im sorry to everybody who ive let down. With that being said, i take full responsibility for the mistake i have made shoplifting. I know that this goes beyond me letting my school down, i let the entire country down. Before i thank everybody who worked so incredibly hard to help us return home safely, i want to thank the Chinese Police and the government for taking care of us and treating us well during our time there. To President Trump and the United States government, thank you for taking the time to intervene on our behalf. We really appreciate you helping us out. Thank you to all the pac 12 representatives for all of your time and support. Thank you dan guerrero for sticking by our sides and doing whatever you could to help us through this. Thank you Chris Carlson for taking the time out of your schedule to stay with us the entire time and guide us every step of the way. To Doug Erickson, thank you for also staying with us and giving us guidance with everything. To my teammates, thank you for being there for us throughout the process. You guys mean so much to me. To coach alford, coach grace, coach bussard, you always believed in me not only as a basketball player but also as a person, im sorry for letting you down. Lastly, to my family, my mom and dad, you guys have raised me to be smart and always make the right choices. You never left my side and it hits me the most that i disappointed and embarrassed you. To my young brother ben, this is not the example that i want to set for you but from here on out i promise i will be the best role model i can be for you to look up to. Ive been looking forward to being an ucla bruin since i was young. The alumni have set such a high standards for both academically and athletically and as an ucla student athlete im disappointed in myself that i failed to live up to that. I can only hope my action, my words, my hard work in the weeks to come whether prove to my coach, teammates and fans that im more capable of meeting the high standard. Away from the court ill work especially hard in the classroom to show i can be an outstanding representative of this incredible university, a place that is so important to many people around the world. Again, thank you to everybody who has been there and expressed concerns for me and my safety this past week. I can assure you that i will never do anything again to jeopardize uclas reputation and my own. Go bruins. Thank you. Next we have liangelo ball. Id like to start off by saying sorry for stealing from the stores in china. I didnt exercise my best judgment and i was wrong for that. I apologize to my family, my coaches, many i teammates and ucla for letting so many people down. I also apologize to the people of china for causing them so much trouble. Im a young man, however. Its not an excuse for making a really stupid decision. I dont feel sorry for myself and ive learned my lesson from this big mistake and im 110 sure that ill not make a bad decision like this one again. Id also like everyone to know that this does not define who i am. My family raised me better than that and im going to make myself a better person from here on out. I have the utmost respect for the Chinese Police department as well and id like to thank them for treating me so respectfully even after i made a stupid decisi decision. Id like to thank Chris Carlson and Doug Erickson for staying with us and just helping us out while we were in china and taking care of us. Im grateful for this ucla team that stood strong beside us and made it possible for me to be sitting in front of you all today. I respect and admire the hard work they put in to get us back to the United States. I would also like to thank President Trump and the United States government for the help that they provided as well. Im grateful to be back home and ill never make a mistake like this again. Im extremely sorry for those who i let down but im also very thankful for all the help, love, and support that they provided and i take full responsibility for my actions and im sorry. Thank you. Thank you liangelo. Next up, jalen hill. I would like to apologize to all the fans who support ucla because i feel like my actions have hurt them the most. It hurts me because i can see the pain i caused them. I apologize to my teammates, my coaches and family because of how Much Negative attention that i put on name they do not deserve. Im sorry for shoplifting. What i did was stupid, theres no other way to put it and im not that type of person. I hope this mistake will not define me as a person but shows i messed up and can learn from it. I dont want to be known for this dumb mistake. I want to be known for my respectfulness and my love and passion for the game of basketball. This event has taught me a lot and changed me in a way that i cant explain. I have so much more respect for the people around me, from our coaches and staff to the fans who live for ucla. I have also strengthened my relationship with god throughout this time. Without him i would be nothing. To all the fans out there watching, i hope you can forgive me. I hope you can forgive my stupid childish actions, i have learned my lesson and i hope that i can earn back the love and support our fans bring to this program. I would like to thank everyone involved in this whole ordeal, thank you to chris, doug, gloria and jerry for staying with us the whole time, thank you to the Police Department which treated us very well, thank you to the pac 12 and the whole ucla community that helped us the whole way and thank you to the United States government and President Trump for your efforts to bring us home. You guys are excused. There we have it, the three ucla players who were detained in china for shoplifting just returned home. Theyve just given this statement where they apologized not only to their friends, their family, their teammates, ucla and their fans but also to the Chinese Government and to the United States government, including donald trump. You might remember donald trump tweeted basically a demand for these players to thank him for his efforts to get them back to the United States. They said that they were sorry for stealing. They said that this should not define them, though, and they will not do this again. Joining me now, daily news columnist and msnbc contributor mike lupica. Mike, whats your reaction . Well, i the kids said all the right things there. I think cody riley thanked so many people i was starting to think it might be a shoplifting awards show. Listen, they did not only dome young guy stuff, they did dumb young guy criminal stuff and they got caught and they have been in china for a week and theyve had a lot of time to think about it is. This the crime of the century, katy . I dont think its the crime of the century. But i hope the athletic directors are talking about this now. Theres going to be some sanction from the ucla Basketball Program for this kids because ive got fur children of my own and i always tell them if you think youre in the wrong place, you are. Not only were they in the wrong place thinking they could do this like entitled jamokes, they were doing this in a foreign country which is wildly out of their comfort zone and i cannot believe that theyre not going to have to pay some kind of price with this basketball season. Are you talking about suspensions . Are you talking about playing not playing two games, three games, not playing the rest of the season . I would think there has to be some substantial amount of games lost for these three players, jalen hill liangelo ball and cody riley. Its not enough that the United States government government involved in this and got them home. I was saying to somebody today, what they did doesnt mean we should turn this thing into midnight express im not saying that but they have to pay some sort of penalty because everything they said today sounded right, they said all the right things but it doesnt mean that they have necessarily learned their lesson. Just to remind our viewers, theyre freshmen, lfreshmen, lio jalen hill and cody riley. You heard them admit to shoplifting. Lets get into the political aspect of it because you cant avoid it in this scenario, the president with that tweet asking sarcastically, by the way, we just got news they are suspended indefinitely according to ucla officials, suspended indefinitely for shoplifting in china and needing the American Government to figure out a way to get them home or negotiate with the chinese to get home home. The president , heres the tweet from this morning do you think the three ucla basketball players will say thank you President Trump . They were headed for ten years . Jail. They were headed for one to four years in jail, we should fact check the president on that, thats according to Washington Post. Mike, what do you make of that . Well, you mean in a culture where everything has to be about President Trump . He gets himself inserted into everything. He was part of the reason these kids are back, that tweet rubbed some people the wrong way, it felt a little bit like the stance hes been taking against the nfl. Katie, if youve been in the end zone as little as hes been in the end zone since becoming president , youre going to spike the ball every chance you get so he spiked the ball and theres an expression in sports, when you get to the end zone, act like youve been there before, well he hasnt scores scored many touchdowns to bring it back to the nfl. I today craig, if you dont blow your own horn, there is no music. And what do you think of this indefinite suspension . Do you think it will last the full season . I dont think it will last a full season. I dont know whether it will be ten games or a dozen games or 15 games but ucla, to maintain any athletic integrity and though in the world in ncaa sports athletic integrity sounds like an oxymoron, they had to take a strong stance with these young men. General kelly had them this right. He called them knuckle heads. This was knuckleheaded behavior but it was also criminal behavior and this is the bill thats been presented by their coach and athletic director. What does that do for the ucla team for the rest of the season no how important were these players . I dont care. I think this is between the school and these three young men. And they say theyve learned a valuable lesson. Well if this suspension costs their team a chance at the ncaa tournament, then they will have really learned a lesson wont they. You know whos going to care . Their teammates and the fans and not to mention ucla. Mike lupicai columnist for the daily news, thank you for sticking around with us to go over those statements, we appreciate it. Always great to be with you, katie. Lets turn back to the other big story were following, the one Kristen Welker was talking about at the top of the hour before we had to interrupt her. The rnc pulled its cash from roy moores Senate Campaign in alabama. What is not known is how President Trump is going to react to developments in that race. Hes now back in the country and weve learned he will make some statement from the white house in the next hour. Those remarks are supposed to focus on his trip but well also be watching to see if he gets a question about moore. Back with me is nbcs Kristen Welker and nbcs kasie hunt. So kristen, i want to go back to you since you were midsentence a moment ago. The president is going to talk. Do you have any indication that he is going to pull his support for roy moore . I think the remarks he will make at 3 00 p. M. Katie are going to be solely focused on his trip to asia, what he sees as the highlights of that trip. Theres been a lot of News Coverage about the fact that while the optics were powerful, the deliverables werent that many so i think hes going to push back against that narrative. Is he going to pull his support for roy moore . I would be surprised if he does that in his remarks he delivers at 3 00 p. M. But he is going to get questioned about that. That will likely be the first question shouted to the president. Who what will he say . I would anticipate he will reiterate what weve heard from white house officials that this is a situation theyre looking at very closely and theyre looking at their options. We know earlier today he spoke with Mitch Mcconnell as well as House Speaker paul ryan. Those conversations likely included a discussion of tax reform and undoubtedly roy moore. We know Mitch Mcconnell by his own admission yesterday wants to see this president encourage his own attorney general Jeff Sessions to run as a write in candidate. Thats one option but its very tricky to see how the mechanics of that will work out. Doesnt the white house tell me what youre hearing from people who are having discussions. Doesnt the white house feel they have an obligation to get involved in a race where a man who is running as a republican to be a senator has been accused of inappropriately touching children . Dont they feel like thats sblg the president might want to say, hey, maybe this man shouldnt be representing the Republican Party in the United States senate . That is a very important question, katy. Let me tell you the thinking behind the scenes here, that roy moore absolutely cannot go to the u. S. Senate. However, what role should the president play in that . Here are the various scenarios theyre weighing. One is that the president reaches out directly to roy moore and encouraginkurcouragesp out of the race. With what if that has a backlash . What if it has the opposite effect as the one theyre hoping for . Thats the concern here. Yes, they would like to see a different republican candidate. Remember, what they continue to stress is that President Trump supported Luther Strange during the primary, he never supported roy moore, he never lent his support to roy moore, he never campaigned for him. He supported Luther Strange from the beginning, they would argue so in terms of how he should so he deleted his tweets and changed his support for roy moore. Right. The issue is theyre concerned if theres a sense theres washington overreach that it could have the opposite effect. That it could create a backlash in alabama from voters who will say this is just washington trying to impose their views on us. I find it so interesting that we have to look at everything through this political spectrum. What if theres a backlash . Its a man accused of inappropriately touching children. You would think that one thing would supersede concerns anyone has about a backlash or political costs that they might have to pay. Kasie hunt, weve been talking nbc has been talking to voters on the ground in alabama. Right now moore is being outspent 111 on the airwaves. We just talked about how the rnc has pulled its support. Here is what alabama voters have been telling us so far. I still think that he should be able to get win the election if hes a good governor. I dont think that Sexual Harassment should be held against him when it comes to voting. Most everyone i know does support him and does not believe the allegations against him. Its its an embarrassment. Its disgraceful and it was disgraceful, though, before the allegations. Those voters are talking to nbcs katie beck. Just to be clear about something, these are not Sexual Harassment allegations. These are allegations of inappropriately touching, actually physically touching young women, a 14yearold girl and assaulting another woman in a back alley, these are not harassment allegations. Kasie hunt . Senate leader Mitch Mcconnell seemed to suggest that attorney general Jeff Sessions take moores place. The probability of that . At this point, katy, who knows . Everybody up here is waiting for the president to make a move and i think they may have some inkling that we havent picked up on yet. Mcconnell said yesterday hes had personal conversations with the president on friday, with john kelly on saturday, with mike pence on monday to tal