DENVER | North Korea denounced Sen. Cory Gardner as “human dirt” who has lost all body hair after the Colorado Republican last week referred to the communist nation’s leader as a “wack job.”
The North’s government-run Korean Central News Agency issued a statement blasting Mr. Gardner as a “psychopath” and worse, committing an “unscrupulous blasphemy” against the country’s “supreme” honor.
“It is a serious provocation that Gardner like a psychopath dare to bear the evil that dares our highest dignity,” said the KCNA statement.
“It is America’s misfortune that a man mixed in with human dirt like Gardner, who has lost basic judgment and body hair, could only spell misfortune for the United States,” the statement said.
“Gardner, who has been advocating in the front line for his ‘repressive sanctions pressure,’ which has been rejected by [North] Korea, has touched our highest dignity, revealing himself as a fierce confrontational fanatic,” KCNA continued in its typically florid fashion.
In a May 3 interview on MSNBC, Mr. Gardner objected to President Trump meeting unconditionally with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
“This is a crazed maniac at the helm of one of the world’s nuclear regimes, trying to become a nuclear regime, and we shouldn’t be in the position of flattery, we shouldn’t be in the position of trying to honor Kim Jong-un by bringing him into a conversation with the United States until he meets those obligations and promises,” said Mr. Gardner.
His comments came after Mr. Trump described the North Korean strongman as a “pretty smart cookie” and said he would be “honored” to meet with him “if it would be appropriate.”
An advocate of tougher sanctions on the Pyongyang regime, Mr. Gardner sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and serves as chairman of the subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy.
In a Monday statement, Mr. Gardner stood firm, saying the United States would not “sit idly by while Kim Jong-un tries to hold the world hostage with his illicit arsenal of mass destruction.”
“I’m going to continue to call on the President to fully enforce my legislation that will economically cripple the North Korean Regime, and if that gets this madman to send nonsensical insults at me, so be it,” said Mr. Gardner.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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