Hungary summoned the US ambassador on Tuesday after President Joe Biden recently accused Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of wanting to install a “dictatorship”, AFP reported.

The Hungarian leader was in Florida last week to meet with his “good friend” Donald Trump, one of the few European leaders who want him to win the presidential election in November.

The meeting was condemned by Biden at a time when relations between the two countries are strained.

“Do you know who he’s seeing at Mar-a-Lago today?” Joe Biden told his supporters at a campaign rally on Friday. “Hungary’s Orbán, who said very simply that he doesn’t think democracy works and that he wants to (establish) a dictatorship.”

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto responded at a press conference on Tuesday: “This is a very serious insult” that “seriously affects our bilateral relations.”

“Nothing compels us to accept such lies from anyone, not even the president of the United States,” he emphasized.

So he asked the American emissary in Budapest, David Pressman, to provide him with “the quote in question.” “Obviously, there was no such statement (by Mr. Orbán), so we didn’t get a satisfactory answer.”

The ambassador, an outspoken critic of Orbán’s government, confirmed he had been summoned “as an emergency,” welcoming “the opportunity to discuss the state of Hungarian democracy,” according to a statement sent to AFP.

In power continuously since 2010, Viktor Orbán claims to practice “illiberal democracy” and maintains close ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, despite the invasion of Ukraine.

In 2022, the European Parliament decided that this central European country is no longer a true democracy, but a “hybrid system of electoral autocracy” with checks and balances that are gradually being undermined.