Dennis Rodman cast shade on former President Barack Obama about missing an opportunity to forge diplomacy with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — an opportunity that Donald Trump seized upon in his historic meeting early Tuesday in Singapore.
“I just want them to talk,” the former NBA star told ABC News’ Michael Strahan in an interview that aired Tuesday on “Good Morning America.” “I said that with Obama, and Obama just pretty much just blew me off, and thought that I was a laughingstock, that I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Rodman also defended Kim, whom he has visited in North Korea several times in the last decade over their shared love of basketball.
“I don’t look at him as a dictator,” said Rodman, wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap and a PotCoin.com t-shirt. “I look at him as more like a person that tries to blend in with the world. I tried to convey that to people, and people looked at me like I was out of my mind.”
Rodman praised Trump for going ahead with the summit meeting and shaking hands with Kim. “It almost didn’t happen,” he said. “I’m glad that it did.”
And he could not resist taking credit for his own role as one of the few Americans to have made any contact with the previously isolated Kim. “I guess it gave me a little more shine of a light as far as knowing the fact that I did something pretty, pretty historical as far as, like, bringing awareness to North Korea and some of the issues that’s over there.”
Kim and Trump came together for the historic summit on Tuesday morning, Singapore time, on an island resort.
The two leaders shook hands warmly in front of a row of alternating U.S. and North Korean flags, according to the Associated Press, before having a 40-minute one-on-one meeting with the aid of interpreters. Both men then signed a document in which Kim apparently agreed to move toward “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
Watch the interview above.