North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will visit the United States in the next two years, his friend Dennis Rodman insisted during a television interview Thursday morning.
“Kim Jong-un will be in America in 18 to 24 months, I guarantee you,” Mr. Rodman, a retired professional basketball player who befriended the dictator, said on Fox News.
“Really?” asked “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade. “As head of state or is he going to defect?”
“He’s coming to do one thing,” Mr. Rodman replied. “To visit America.”
Mr. Rodman, 58, first met the North Korean leader in 2013 while participating in a basketball game held in Pyongyang. He has since visited the country several times and has referred to Mr. Kim as a “friend for life.”
Mr. Rodman made a similar remark about the North Korean leader potentially visiting the U.S. during an interview that aired Tuesday on Fox Business Network.
“He is really open … to coming to America,” Mr. Rodman said. “He really wants to come to America, but I think because of his history and his culture and his family, I think that’s what’s stopping him from coming here, to have relationships with Americans.”
“I’ve said it for like seven years — one day, the doors are going to open with North Korea and America,” the former NBA player said. “I think it’s going to happen. In the next 18 to 24 months, you’ll see Kim Jong-un in Washington, D.C.”
Appearing on Fox News, the basketball legend denied he is “best friends” with the leader of North Korea’s brutal regime.
“I say that, but I don’t want the people around the world to think that, we’re like, I go to dinner with him every night, stuff like that,” Mr. Rodman said.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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