Leading Polish politician Jarosław Kaczyński rebuked Bill Clinton Tuesday for suggesting that the Polish people were sluggishly giving in to authoritarianism.
“Poland and Hungary, two countries that would not be free but for the United States and the long Cold War, have now decided this democracy is too much trouble,” Clinton said during a rally for his wife in New Jersey Friday.
The former president compared the populist leadership of Poland to that of Hillary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump.
“They want Putin-like leadership: Just give me an authoritarian dictatorship and keep the foreigners out,” Clinton said. “Sound familiar?”
Kaczyński, leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, shot back at Bill Tuesday.
“If someone believes that there is no democracy in Poland, they should be medically examined,” Kaczyński said and conjectured that the media influenced Clinton’s view.
“The media, different factors in the world, provoked a gigantic misunderstanding,” Kaczyński said, according to TASS. “It is possible that this is influencing the ex-president. Otherwise, I cannot explain it.”
Polish foreign ministry spokesman Rafał Sobczah also called Clinton’s comment “unfair” and underscored that the former president’s view was “not the official position of the American administration.”
“We understand that he said this in the context of the U.S. election campaign,” Sobczah said.
A February profile of Kaczyński in the Financial Times described the Polish leader as a socially conservative “ideologue” with deep-seated suspicion of the European Union and Russia, who “has found success in a crude patriotic, often nationalist … populism.” The profile also called him “the most powerful man in Poland.”
