The Hungarian government on Tuesday summoned U.S. ambassador David Pressman to protest derogatory comments made by President Biden, in which he claimed Hungary’s leader wants a “dictatorship.”
On Friday, Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán visited former president Trump in Florida, something President Biden saw fit to bring up during a Philadelphia campaign stop.
“You know who he’s meeting with today down at Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship,” Biden said.
Péter Sziijártó, Hungarian foreign minister, called the statement “a very serious insult” and responded by saying,
We are not obliged to put up with such lies from anyone, even if that person happens to be the President of the United States.
At the meeting, Sziijártó said he had pointed out to Ambassador Pressman that the U.S. president’s official statement that the government is building a dictatorship in Hungary makes bilateral relations extremely difficult and hurts not the government, but the country. The foreign minister also said
Deputy Minister Levente Magyar asked the ambassador to show the quote with the place and time where the prime minister said what Joe Biden attributed to him. Obviously, no such thing was said, so we cannot get a meaningful answer to this.
The prime minister and the government do not lead the country thanks to a random lottery, but based on the people’s choice. The ruling party has won four elections in a row, the people have chosen the direction of the government, which they will implement, if they do not implement it, the people will not re-elect them, this is one of the important features of democracy.
A U.S. embassy spokesman confirmed to The Guardian newspaper that Pressman had been summoned by the ministry of foreign affairs regarding Biden’s statement, and said that “Ambassador Pressman always welcomes the opportunity to discuss the state of Hungary’s democracy with our ally.”
