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Hungary is not obliged to tolerate lies, even from the President of the United States, and the government has therefore asked the U.S. Ambassador, David Pressman, to comment on the statements made by Joe Biden about Prime Minister Viktor Orbán last week, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said in Budapest on Tuesday.
The Minister was asked at a joint press conference with his Albanian counterpart about U.S. President Joe Biden’s comment that Viktor Orbán had declared that he did not believe in democracy. In response, he said:
We are not obliged to tolerate such lies from anyone. Even if that person is the President of the United States of America.”
“After this lie was told about the Hungarian Prime Minister, we asked the U.S. Ambassador to the Ministry, who was here today, and was received by Deputy Minister Levente Magyar, and we asked the Ambassador to show us the quote with the place and time where the Prime Minister would have said this,” he informed.
Obviously, no such statement was made, hence we could not get any kind of substantive response,”
Péter Szijjártó stressed.
David Pressman. Photo via Facebook/US Embassy Budapest
The Foreign Minister also reported that bilateral relations are extremely complicated by the ambassador’s statement that the official U.S. position is that “here in Hungary we are building a dictatorship,” as this is not an insult to the government but to the country. “Because the Prime Minister and the government are not running this country by a random draw, but by the people’s choice. We have won four elections in a row and the people have set the direction of governance, which we are implementing,” he explained.
“So this is a very serious insult, we have resented it, we have asked the ambassador, and
this kind of thinking of the U.S. President, of the administration, of the Democratic administration, is a serious burden on our bilateral relations,”
he emphasized.
Referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s statement that the Hungarian government is playing a very dangerous game with Russia, the Minister said that what is dangerous is war itself, as people die in fighting, and there is also a risk of escalation. “We do not want this war to spread, because we live in the neighborhood of the war, and if the war spreads, we will be the ones directly at risk. So we will continue to do everything we can to ensure that there is peace in the neighborhood,” he stressed.
Szijjártó also mentioned the Prime Minister’s visit to the U.S. and noted that “the meeting with former President Donald Trump was very encouraging in terms of the hope for peace.”
Via MTI; Featured image via Facebook/Joe Biden