BUDAPEST, September 7. /TASS/. The US has no right to lecture other countries on democracy as it is violating democratic standards by trying to prevent former US President Donald Trump from running for president, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.
He made the statement at a news conference following talks in Budapest with his North Macedonian counterpart Bujar Osmani, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
When asked to comment on reports that US President Joe Biden’s administration and Democratic lawmakers seek to prevent Trump from running for president in 2024, based on lawsuits against him and provisions of the US Constitution, Szijjarto said the US will now have to "scrap their moralizing statements about the state of the Hungarian democracy."
"From now on, we don't want to hear the Americans talk about how democracy works here, how institutions work, how things are with the rule of law. Because if they can disqualify one of the main candidates in an election, we will not accept any criticism from them about how our political system functions," the minister said, according to a broadcast of the news conference on Facebook (banned in Russia as it’s owned by Meta Corporation, which is designated as extremist in Russia).
Szijjarto also said that Trump's removal from the presidential race would be very bad news because if he won the race for the White House again, he would be able to achieve a settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.
"We have every reason to believe that if Donald Trump were to become US president, there would be peace in our neck of the woods very soon. We are also convinced that if Donald Trump had remained in office as US president, this war would not have broken out," the minister said.
"Thus, for those who stand for peace, it would be very bad news if the US efforts to eliminate the most likely presidential candidate [from the Republican Party] succeeded," the minister said.
Szijjarto had said earlier that Hungary is counting on Trump's return to the White House, as this will allow him to deal with the settlement in Ukraine. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also said as much on a number of occasions. In a recent interview with US television journalist Tucker Carlson, the prime minister expressed confidence that if Trump were to win the US presidential election in 2024, he would be able to put an end to the Ukrainian conflict.