Outlandish basketball great Dennis Rodman — heavily criticized for his bizarre friendship with North Korea strongman Kim Jong Un — wants President Donald Trump to appoint him as a peace envoy to the saber-rattling Asian nation.
"I've been trying to tell Donald since day one: 'Come talk to me, man . . . I'll tell you what the Marshal wants more than anything . . . It's not even that much,'" Rodman told The Guardian newspaper, using the nickname he calls Kim.
But when pressed on what Kim wants, the ex-NBA star said: "I ain't telling you . . . I will tell him [Trump] when I see him."
Rodman — a power forward who played for the Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas Mavericks — had been set to make his sixth visit to Pyongyang this week to visit Kim, who he calls a "friend for life."
But the trip was canceled because of a U.S. travel ban which was enacted after the controversial death of Otto Warmbier, an American college student jailed in Pyongyang for more than a year for attempted theft of a propaganda poster.
Kim has been threatening to launch a nuclear strike on the United States and last month performed an intercontinental ballistic missile test he claims can hit American soil.
He and Trump also have traded many insults, with the commander in chief calling Kim "rocket man" and last month bristling over Kim's kidding about his age.
Rodman, who began visiting Kim in 2013, thinks a peaceful solution to the nerve-wracking standoff is possible.
"If I can go back over there . . . you'll see me talking to [Kim], and sitting down and having dinner, a glass of wine, laughing and doing my thing. I guess things will settle down a bit and everybody can rest at ease," he said.
"I think a lot of people around the world . . . want me to go just to see if I can do something."
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