The North Korean regime hurled insults at Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner late last week, calling him a "man mixed in with human dirt" who had "lost basic judgment and body hair."

An interview Gardner gave on MSNBC angered the regime -- he called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a "whack job" and a "crazed maniac." He was responding to comments made by President Trump, who had said that he would be "honored" to meet with Kim "under the right circumstances."

A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Gardner has urged the Trump administration to put North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terror and increase pressure on the North to give up its nuclear weapons program. Tensions are running high on the Korean Peninsula since North Korea stepped up testing of its missile systems.

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A spokesman for North Korea's foreign ministry said on the state's news agency Friday that Gardner had "perpetrated wicked blasphemy against our supreme dignity during an interview with NBC," according to a UPI translation.

"For a psychopath like the [expletive] Gardner, to hurl evil accusations at our highest dignity, is a serious provocation," the spokesman said. "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."

Gardner was unmoved by the barbs, saying in a statement Monday that the United States "is not going to 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," he said.