Dennis Rodman calls President Donald Trump a friend, but he thinks he’d do a better job than his former “Celebrity Apprentice” boss in convincing Kim Jong Un he shouldn’t launch a nuclear attack against the United States.
In an interview with the British TV show “Good Morning Britain,” the former NBA star said he was just the guy to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the New York Post reported. That’s because he’s not “crazy sometimes” like Trump, and he’s established a good rapport with the North Korean despot over his five visits to that foreboding, Stalinist nation.
“For me to go over there and see [Kim] as much as I have, I basically hang out with him all the time. We laugh, we sing karaoke, we do a lot of cool things together. We ride horses, we hang out, we go skiing, we hardly ever talk politics and that’s the good thing,” said Rodman, who at 6-foot-7 is a full foot taller than the Korean dictator.
“I just want to try to straighten things out for everyone to get along together,” Rodman said.
Rodman, if you’ll recall, enjoys a strange affinity with Kim, even choosing to ignore the dictator’s brutality to the people under his rule, people who know him told the Chicago Tribune. Rodman’s most recent visit to North Korea was in June. He went on behalf of PotCoin.com, a company that peddles cryptocurrency for buying and selling marijuana, the Tribune said.
When Rodman, 56, returned to the United States, he hawked T-shifts on Twitter. The shirts showed a cartoon image of himself spinning a basketball with with one hand and flashing a peace sign with the other, sandwiched by the words “Ambassador Rodman,” the Tribune said.
Unfortunately, the wanna-be diplomat displayed a disastrous sense of timing. The night before his Twitter display, Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student held in North Korea for more than a year and released June 13 in a coma, died at home in Ohio.
Rodman, aka The Worm, later offered “prayer and love” to Warmbier’s family, but also insisted in an interview with “Good Morning America” that his visit helped secure the student’s release. The State Department told the Tribune he had nothing to do with it.
Criticism over Rodman’s June trip hasn’t diminished what friends describe as Rodman’s sincere, if naive, intentions. “He genuinely thinks he’s trying to change the world,” a friend told the Tribune.
However, Rodman’s potential to broker peace depends a lot on what Trump thinks. He said he’d love to be U.S. ambassador to North Korea but he hasn’t actually talked to Trump since their “Celebrity Apprentice” days, Heavy.com reported.
Back in 2013, Trump appeared on “Fox and Friends” and endorsed Rodman’s suggestion that former President Barack Obama and Kim have a phone call.
But when Rodman suggested that Trump take part in that dialogue, Trump called Rodman “delusional.” A year later, Trump tweeted that Rodman was “either drunk or on drugs (delusional)” when he suggested Trump should go with him to North Korea.
Now that Trump is president, he’s the one in charge, but will he turn to Rodman for advice, as he suggested Obama do?
As of now, Trump doesn’t seem to be in any kind of mood to talk with Kim and try to find common ground. Maybe Rodman should realize that by paying more attention to Trump’s recent tweets:
South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
..North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017
North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017