White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday defended President Donald Trump’s overtures, arguing that the president’s embrace is keeping Americans safe. | Getty Spicer defends Trump's warm words for totalitarian leaders

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday defended President Donald Trump's kind words for totalitarian leaders, saying the president is protecting the American people and U.S. allies through his seemingly warm relations with such men.

In an interview with CBS’ John Dickerson, Trump said North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “a pretty smart cookie.” The president also invited Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to the White House. Duterte has been accused of human rights abuses, including thousands of extrajudicial killings in his war against drugs.


But Spicer on Monday defended Trump’s overtures, arguing that the president’s embrace is keeping Americans safe (Trump told Fox News’ Eric Bolling regarding North Korea, “Nobody's safe,” according to an excerpt of the interview released earlier Monday).

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

Echoing Trump, Spicer praised Kim from his lectern inside the White House briefing room for leading North Korea “forward.”

“He assumed power at a young age when his father passed away. 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,” Spicer reasoned. “You know, he is a young person to be leading a country with nuclear weapons. And so that set aside, I think the president recognizes the threat that he posed and is doing everything he can to isolate that threat and to make sure we bring stability to the region.”

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As for Duterte, who called former President Barack Obama a “son of a whore” and told him to “go to hell,” Spicer suggested Trump is fully aware of the controversial leader’s human rights abuses.

“I mean, the president gets fully briefed on the leaders that he’s speaking to, obviously, but the No. 1 concern of this president is to make sure that we do everything we can to protect our people — and specifically to economically and diplomatically isolate North Korea,” he said. “And I think when you look at what he is doing in terms of building that coalition of countries in that region to do it, I think this is hopefully gonna have — I mean, I’m not gonna tell you every single thing that’s in his brief, but he’s well aware of when he speaks with a leader, he gets briefed on a lot about what they’re doing, what they’ve done. That’s all part of the brief.”