During a lengthy press conference at the White House on Monday, Trump complained that numerous allied nations, including South Korea, had not assisted the U.S. in the war against Iran. "We have 45,000 troops in South Korea to protect us from Kim Jong-un, with whom I, as you know, get along very well," the president told reporters. He said the North Korean leader had said very nice things about him. "He called Joe Biden a mentally retarded person. Joe Biden, he said he is a mentally retarded person. He was so nasty to Joe Biden, it was horrible. But as for me, he loves Trump," he said. Kim, who became the country's supreme leader in 2011, and other senior North Korean officials have spent years hurling insults at American politicians. In 2014, the country's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Ri Tong Il, called the U.S. a "mentally retarded patient." In 2023, the supreme leader's sister, Kim Yo-jong, lashed out at Biden for his warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would lead to the end of her regime. She described the former president as senile but warned that her brother's government would not dismiss Biden's words as "the nonsensical remark of a person in his years (senility)." Although Trump boasted of his cordial relationship with Kim, he too was not spared sharp criticism from the North Korean leader. During Trump's first term, the autocrat mocked him as a "dotard," a "frightened dog," and a "gangster fond of playing with fire." In 2018, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet with Kim. He met with him on two other occasions, boasting about the "love letters" he received from the North Korean leader. However, their talks on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula proved unsuccessful, and the country has conducted multiple missile tests in recent years.