White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lavished praise Thursday on President Donald Trump in what columnist Greg Sargent called “one of her most obsequious, fawning tirades yet” – flattery, he argued, that is backfiring as Trump’s poll numbers plummet.

“We can always tell when Trump is in a shaky situation when press secretary Karoline Leavitt rushes in to praise him with absurdly over-the-top obsequious flattery – and boy, did she not disappoint this time,” Sargent said in the latest episode of his podcast The Daily Blast.

“…Leavitt’s North Korea–style propaganda actually works against Trump by reinforcing the emperor-has-no-clothes vibe around him.”

New polls have shown Trump’s favorability has plummeted to its lowest point in his second term, driven largely by independents, and that he was also bleeding support from key voting blocs such as Hispanic voters.

And as Trump’s numbers continue to plummet, Sargent argued that Leavitt inversely increases her flattery of the president, but largely to his detriment, singling out Leavitt’s calls Thursday for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for resolving several geopolitical conflicts.

“When she does that kind of thing, it’s so visibly directed at the audience of one,” Sargent said, speaking to Leavitt’s calls for Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

“It’s so obviously done solely to make Trump feel good – because there’s not another human being on this earth that’s going to take that ridiculousness seriously except for maybe the most hardcore of Trump supporters. And yet at the same time, that display just reminds everyone that the emperor has no clothes, as I said earlier… it’s so obsequious and it’s so disconnected from reality.”

Yet despite Leavitt upping the flattery on Trump, coinciding with the president’s favorability continuing to drop, Sargent argued that the press secretary was compelled to do so given what he characterized as Trump’s need for constant praise.

“Dictators care quite a bit about being popular,” he said. “Eventually, they will create a situation in which they close themselves off from public opinion. But this is a president that cares very, very deeply about that.”