One reason that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is okay with meeting President Donald Trump next May, I suspect, is that they’re peas in a pod — a pair of overweight, cult-of-personality authoritarians who have reflexively turned to bluster when challenged — and that a certain form of blowhard-to-blowhard, asshole-to-asshole, takes-one-to-know-one communication will probably kick in.

That’s probably the instinctual motive on both sides, come to think of it.

What may result is another matter. There’s ample cause for skepticism. A 3.9 N.Y. Times analysis piece by Max Fischer (“7 Big Things to Understand About Trump’s Talks With North Korea”) covers most of the bases.

Korea-watcher Jeffrey Lewis c/o Middlebury Institute of International Studies: “Kim is not inviting Trump so that he can surrender North Korea’s weapons. He’s inviting Trump to demonstrate that his investment in nuclear and missile capabilities has forced the United States to treat him as an equal.”

From a 3.9 Economist piece, “The Pros and Cons of a Summit Between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un”:

“Skeptics are also right to fear that Mr Trump — a man who boasts about his television ratings, and who is bored by briefings and scornful of foreign alliances — could end up being played like a gold-plated violin.

“There is nothing new about a North Korean despot proposing a meeting with an American president, or expressing warm words about denuclearization in return for security guarantees, by which the Kim regime usually means the withdrawal of American troops from the Korean peninsula and the breaking of treaty alliances with South Korea and Japan.”