Trump credits his 'little rocket man' Twitter taunts for leading to the Kim summit

After President Trump sat down with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in a historic summit, he energetically praised Kim's love for his people, the beautiful beaches of North Korea, and his own foreign policy acumen, claiming that his Twitter tirades against the dictator were a deliberate plan that paid off.

In an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, Trump explained that when he was tweeting about his "bigger" nuclear button and calling Kim "little rocket man," he was really executing a long-term strategy to get Kim to come around to the idea of denuclearization.

"Well, I think without the rhetoric we wouldn't have been here,” Trump told Hannity. “I really believe that." Trump blamed "other administrations" for relying on a "policy of silence" to deal with North Korea. "That's not the answer. That's not what you have to do," he said.

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Just ahead of the "chat among friends," Hannity used the same argument as Trump to explain how he so successfully navigated the U.S. to its first meeting with North Korea. "The liberal policy of appeasement of, well frankly, ass-kissing and ring-kissing, and bowing before dictators and despots, it doesn't work," said Hannity on his radio show.

Trump patted himself on the back for sticking with his strategy even though he "felt a little embarrassed" about his aggression toward Kim. "I hated to do it," he said. "Sometimes I felt foolish doing it. But we had no choice." Watch the interview below, via Fox News. Summer Meza