“China is the one, the only one, that can control Kim Jong Un, this crazy fat kid that’s running North Korea,” the senator said in an MSNBC interview, adding China “could stop North Korea’s economy in a week.”

The DPRK News Service account, which is maintained by the members of the libertarian law blog Popehat.com, had a bit of fun with McCain’s remarks.

USA Today, like many newsrooms before them, fell for it.

“The state-run North Korean News Service accused McCain of attacking that nation’s dignity,” the news group reported Thursday, quoting the DPRK News Service’s tweet calling McCain a “noted idiot” and “infantile lunatic.”

The article also included an embedded version of the joke tweet.

USA Today has since removed the tweet from its report. The following editor’s note has been added to the story: “Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this story included a tweet from a parody account. The quoted tweet has since been removed from the story.”

For what it’s worth, North Korea actually did later respond to McCain.

“What [he] uttered to dare hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK is just a manifestation of their worst history towards DPRK’s ideology and social system and its people and a grave provocation little short of a declaration of war,”
a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Explicitly speaking once again, the revolutionary forces of the DPRK with its nuclear force for self-defence as its pivot will fulfill its sacred mission of devotedly defending its supreme leadership representing the destiny and life of its people by dealing a merciless sledge-hammer blow at those daring hurt the dignity of the supreme leadership like a puppy knowing no fear of the tiger,” the statement added.

McCain, for his part, responded to North Korea’s rebuttal with a simple jab: “What, did they want me to call him a crazy skinny kid?”

(h/t Rob Beschizza‏)