In an interview with Bloomberg News, US President Donald Trump has said that he would be “honoured” to meet with Kim Jong-un, but only “under the right circumstances.” The media has since exploded surrounding this issue, and the burden is on White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to explain why Trump said he’d be “happy” to sit down with the guy threatening to nuke the t*ts off the United States.

Spicer has taken the strategy of noting Kim’s positives

Spicer’s strategy in explaining Trump’s comments to reporters has been to say wonderful and laudatory things about Kim in an attempt to get everybody he’s threatening to kill on his side.

It’s a bad strategy, because the US are supposed to be at odds with North Korea. It’s strange to see a Washington official saying positive things about the leader running the nuclear weapons program in Pyongyang. That won’t get Kim to curtail his nuclear threats. He’s just sitting in his front room right now, watching this on his giant TV, clapping his hands with a big grin.

Of the compliments Spicer paid Kim, first and foremost was calling him a “smart cookie.” The Trump administration likes calling intimidating political figures “cookies.” Trump called Vladimir Putin a “tough cookie” once. It’s the formula they use. Spicer then told Kim’s life story, noting how “he assumed power at a young age” after his father, Kim Jong-il, died, and praised Kim Jong-un for how he has nobly “managed to lead a country forward,” even though he was faced with “a lot of potential threats” when he assumed power over North Korea.

Spicer said that Kim is “a young person to be leading a country with nuclear weapons,” quite possibly in an attempt to get people to sympathise with him.