USA, New Jersey – Former President Bill Clinton said at a campaign event to support his wife Hillary on Friday, May 13, that “Hungary and Poland have now decided Democracy is too much trouble, therefore they want Putin-like leadership”. Hungarian and Polish diplomacies condemned this sentence.
On Friday, May 13, the former US President Bill Clinton spoke at a campaign meeting in support of his wife Hillary Clinton. When speaking about Central Europe to make a comparison with Donald Trump. “Just give me an authoritarian dictatorship and keep the foreigners out, sound familiar?” he said. Hungary and Poland would not be free today without the United States and the long cold war, he insisted, forgetting that USA signed the Yalta treaty. “You’ve gotta have somebody who from the beginning knows how to keep big bad things from happening, and make good things happen,” Clinton emphasized, speaking about his wife’s foreign policy experience.
Both Budapest and Warsaw responded with outrage over Clinton’s comments.
“Hungary and Poland have now decided Democracy is too much trouble, therefore they want Putin-like leadership” said Clinton. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó made a statement to the press in answer to the declarations of Bill Clinton. Mr. Szijjártó wrote that contrary to Bill Clinton’s claims, Hungary’s freedom was delivered by Hungarian people and not the United States, with tens of thousands of Hungarians sacrificing their lives for Hungarian freedom. “To underestimate the freedom struggle of the Hungarian people in such a way is unacceptable”, the foreign minister said. “The decision of the Hungarian people may not appeal to Bill Clinton, but this is insufficient justification for the former U. S. President to insult them in such a way”, Szijjártó wrote.
Polish diplomacy reacted also to this speech. The Foreign Ministry said it was unfair. The Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło said that Bill Clinton should apologize to the Poles for his words. Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party and Poland’s most powerful politician, told reporters Tuesday afternoon: “If someone feels that there is no democracy in Poland, they should be medically examined.”
Hungary Today notes that Ms. Clinton’s campaign is supported by George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire financier and founder of Open Society Foundations, who is an avid supporter of mass migration to Western countries and a long-time critic of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government.
