Budapest has protested US President Joe Biden’s remarks that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeking to establish a “dictatorship.” Hungary will not tolerate these “lies,” Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told journalists on Tuesday.
Biden made the comments last Friday during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania. Earlier in the day, Orban visited Donald Trump, the previous US president and Biden’s presumptive rival in the upcoming election, at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Orban “stated flatly that he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship,” Biden claimed in his speech.
On Tuesday, Szijjarto told reporters that Orban had never said anything close to these words. He also revealed that Budapest summoned Washington’s ambassador over the matter.
“We asked the ambassador to show us the quote, with the place and date, where the prime minister has said what the president of the United States attributed to him. Obviously, no such statement was made, so we could receive no substantive response,” the foreign minister said.
Budapest is “not obliged to tolerate such lies from anyone, even if that person happens to be the president of the United States of America,” Szijjarto added.
The US Embassy confirmed that envoy David Pressman was summoned for an urgent meeting by the Hungarian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday.
“Ambassador Pressman always welcomes the opportunity to discuss the state of Hungary’s democracy with our ally,” a spokesperson told AFP in an emailed statement.
Following his meeting with Trump, Orban praised the former US leader as “the president of peace” and said his return to the White House would be “better” for the world.
The Hungarian prime minister also said he is proud that his nation also seeks peace. Hungary has consistently called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Kiev and Moscow, as well as criticizing other Western nations for sending weapons to Ukraine. It has also maintained economic ties with Russia and called the EU sanctions against Moscow “counterproductive.”