u/Frogsknecht - originally from r/GenZhou
Funnily enough, I got randomly curious of this a few months ago and did some digging into it. And you might be quite pleasantly surprised to find out that, yes, Dennis Rodman is based:

“You write what you hear, but you don’t see what you write,” Rodman complained, saying he wants to bring a journalist on one of his trips to visit his friend.

Rodman says Kim asked him to do one thing: “Tell the American people we’re very cool.”^1

Further:

When Rodman landed, four Americans were being detained in North Korea. When asked if he planned to raise their detention with North Korean officials, Rodman said: Well that’s not my purpose right now… My purpose is to go over there and try to see if I can keep bringing sports to North Korea.”

"Dennis does have a view that if people will talk and interact and if there’s dialogue and exchanges and interactions, this process will naturally lead to de-escalation,” Pinkston told CNN.^2

Accompanied by his wife, Kim emerged in the stadium in Pyongyang to cheering crowds who for several minutes wished him a long life, stopping only when the leader hushed them. Rodman gave an impromptu speech and then led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to Kim.

Images released by The Associated Press also showed Rodman appearing to bow to Kim.^3

And, to top it off, he defended the DPRK arresting a spy against American media:

Most striking were his comments on Bae, a Korean-American who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor last year on charges that he planned an operation to topple North Korea’s government through religious activities.

"Do you understand what he did in this country?” Rodman asked Cuomo. “No, no, no, you tell me, you tell me. Why is he held captive here in this country, why?”

“I would love to speak on this,” Rodman said, before abruptly switching topic to talk about how his fellow basketball players had left their families behind to come to North Korea for the exhibition game.

Bonus: he "apologized" for it without apologizing.

"I want to first apologize to Kenneth Bae’s family. I want to apologize to my teammates and my management team. I also want to apologize to Chris Cuomo. I’m very sorry. At this point I should know better than to make political statements. I’m truly sorry."

He never backed down lmao. Truly a king