Donald Trump first coined the term “rocket man” to describe Mr Kim in 2017.
Former US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the Elton John CD he gifted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his presidency was “made in South Korea”. Speaking on the ‘Full Send Pocast’, Mr Trump said the gag gift for Mr Kim – whom he mocked as “Little Rocket Man” – had served to drive relations between North and South Korea in a positive direction.
“I asked him, ‘Have you ever heard the Rocket Man song?’ when I was with him. He said, ‘No, no, no,'” Mr. Trump recalled. “Have you ever heard of Elton John? ‘No, no, no.’ I actually gave him the song ‘Rocket Man’, which is a really cool song by Elton John,” he added.
“I gave him a tape… To be honest I didn’t show that it was made in South Korea. The record – it said ‘South Korea’.” I said, ‘Take it off.’ We cut it out,” Mr Trump joked.
According to new york postIn 2018, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo handed the CD to Kim Jong-un on behalf of Mr Trump during administration meetings with the North Korean leader.
The CD then paved the way for his controversial 2019 meeting with the dictator. The meeting made Donald Trump the first US president to cross into North Korea.
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Meanwhile, in the podcast, Mr Trump also called Kim Jong-un a “smart, cunning and ruthless man”. “But I got to know her very well,” he said, according to newsweek, Trump said, “And I think we would have had a nuclear war, if Obama had been able to stay or if Hillary Clinton had been president, you would have had a nuclear war with North Korea.”
Notably, Donald Trump first coined the term “rocket man” to describe Mr Kim in 2017, a jab at North Korea’s increase in missile and nuclear testing.