He has extended a White House invitation to Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, a leader who has defended the assassination of journalists and condoned extrajudicial killings in the name of his war on drugs.

In multiple interviews, President Donald Trump has also heaped praise on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling him a “smart cookie,” and saying he would be “honored” to meet with him under the right circumstances.


And the president who prides himself on upending political norms called Turkey’s authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to congratulate him on winning a referendum that will allow him to continue his autocratic rule over the country.

Trump's warm rhetoric toward totalitarian leaders is a sharp break from presidents before him. It’s reflective of a commander in chief naturally impressed by blunt displays of power and influence, sensitive to shows of disrespect, who is still processing his own shocking victory in the 2016 election, and who has no diplomatic experience on the world stage.

But foreign policy experts — particularly those who served in the Obama administration — said his kind words for the strongmen also carry serious repercussions for America’s standing as the leader of the free world.

“We’ve always had relationships with governments that are problematic, but we hold them accountable on it and we don’t lavish them with praise this way,” said Ilan Goldenberg, a former State Department official under John Kerry who now serves as a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

“It completely undercuts our soft power, our influence and our credibility as the leader of the free world, especially when the Western alliance is under attack. The fear of complicating relationships with the United States acts as a restraint — when Trump lavishes this praise, he implies there is no restraint.”

On Monday, it was left up to Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, to explain and defend the president’s apparent affections for totalitarian leaders. Spicer framed his boss’ exceptional statements of support as his method of protecting America from the nuclear threat of North Korea.

In the case of Duterte, Spicer described the invitation to visit the White House as an “opportunity for us to work with countries in that region by diplomatically isolating North Korea.” He also suggested that Trump, who has declared his own war of words against the “fake news” media, was fully briefed on Duterte’s most recent comments about how journalists are fair targets for assassination “if you’re a son of a bitch.”

“He gets briefed on a lot about what they’re doing, what they’ve done,” Spicer said. “That’s all part of the brief.”

And when it came to Kim — a leader who has launched multiple provocative ballistic missile tests since Trump took office — Spicer defended the president’s comment that he would be “honored” to meet him as simply respecting someone in power.

“He’s still a head of state,” Spicer said. “There’s still a diplomatic piece of this.”

Spicer explained why Trump is impressed by the young leader, echoing comments the president made over the weekend in an interview with CBS News’ John Dickerson. “He assumed power at a young age when his father passed away,” Spicer said of Kim. “And there was a lot of potential threats that could have come his way, and he’s obviously managed to lead a country forward, despite the obvious concerns that we and so many people have. You know, he is a young person to be leading a country with nuclear weapons.”

Trump, 70, is not a young leader himself. But he appears to feel a kinship with people who rose to positions of power despite forces of the establishment underestimating them.

He also appreciates a leader who projects the image of winning. "You know he’s very popular in the Philippines,” Trump said on Monday about Duterte to Bloomberg News. “He has a very high approval rating in the Philippines.”

When pressed on why the president insisted on praising the totalitarian leaders, Spicer said that’s simply the hand he has been dealt.

“Unfortunately, those are the neighbors,” Spicer said. “Those are the countries that can be helpful as we move forward to try to prevent the threat that [North Korea] pose[s].”

Trump’s latest string of praise for leaders with checkered human rights records echoes the repeated flattering comments he offered Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 campaign. "I mean this guy has done — whether you like him or don't like him — he's doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period," Trump said in an interview last year.

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But his words carry more weight now that they come from the commander in chief.

Philippe Reines, a former top State Department official under Hillary Clinton, noted that Trump’s statements are sometimes “irredeemable.” But others, he said, are “only one word away from being perfectly fine. It’s usually the last stand-alone word and accompanying exclamation point that tips the scale. What he said about Kim Jung Un was the verbal equivalent of the bad extra word. Is it a good idea to meet with him? Most will say no, some will say why not. But that’s an honest policy disagreement. Should anyone be ‘honored’ to meet him? No, and that’s indisputable.”

For Spicer, it’s more complicated than that.

“Obviously, there’s a human rights component that goes into all of this and so it’s a balance,” Spicer went on to say. “We want to make sure that our country, our people are protected. This isn’t a simple yes-or-no kind of situation.”

He said the talk that goes on in private between the leaders “can achieve results not just for our people, but for their people.”

In the end, Spicer appealed to Trump’s image in the world as a deal-maker to explain his unusual methods. “It’s a balancing act,” he said, “but the president is getting real results.”

