Will this cause their relationship to go south?
Donald Trump said Thursday that the Elton John CD he pettily gifted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his presidency was “made in South Korea.”
As a guest on the “Full Send Podcast,” the former president explained that the gag gift for the dictator — who he mockingly dubbed “Little Rocket Man” — worked to steer the relationship between the two countries in a positive direction.
“I asked him, ‘Did you ever hear of the song Rocket Man?’ when I was with him. He said, ‘No, no, no,’” Trump recounted. “Did you ever hear about Elton John? ‘No, no, no.’ I actually handed him the song ‘Rocket Man,’ which is a pretty good song by Elton John.”
“I gave him a tape …I didn’t show that it was made in South Korea, frankly. That the record — it said ‘South Korea.’ I said, ‘Take that off.’ We had it chiseled off,” Trump joked.
On Trump’s behalf, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo handed the CD to Kim during the administration’s meetings with the dictator in 2018.
Trump had repeatedly called Kim “Little Rocket Man” after North Korea was slapped with sanctions for detonating nuclear devices.
The US and North Korea had a “rough” relationship leading up to the meeting, Trump said. The 2024 presidential frontrunner recalled his famous tweet firing back at Kim for allegedly threatening to use the nuclear button that is “on his desk at all times” by claiming the US’s button is bigger and more powerful.
The Elton John CD paved the way for his controversial 2019 meeting with the dictator — which made him the first sitting US president to cross into North Korea — and saved the US from a nuclear war with the volatile country, the former president asserted.
“I think we would have had nuclear war had Obama been able to stay or had crooked Hillary Clinton become president. You would have had a nuclear war with North Korea. Absolutely,” he said.
On his episode of the podcast — which was preceded by an episode featuring porn star Abella Danger — the former president reiterated his statement that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is only pursuing criminal charges against him in order to advance a left-leaning political agenda.
Trump claimed he would have never been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records if he weren’t a viable candidate in the 2024 race for president.
“If I was doing badly in the polls, there would be no investigations, there’d be no problems. Or if I would not run, there would be no problems,” he said.
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