Sikorski was speaking to TVN, a television station owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, on Tuesday evening about his intention to run in the 2025 Polish presidential race.
At the end of the interview, the TVN presenter, Monika Olejnik, citing a Polish magazine, said that for some members of the Civic Coalition, the dominant part of Poland’s governing coalition, the origin of his wife, Anne Applebaum, would be a problem for Sikorski's potential candidacy.
Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist, was born in the U.S. into a Jewish family.
Sikorski replied: “I would say that there is already a secular tradition that first ladies should be people of Jewish origin,” in an apparent reference to Agata Kornhauser-Duda, the wife of the current president, Andrzej Duda, who is of Jewish descent.
The foreign minister then, as the cameras still rolled, appeared to leave the studio abruptly.
Taking to the X platform later in the day, he wrote: “I believe that making the origin of a candidate's wife an issue in the presidential election is unacceptable.
“Contrary to... Olejnik’s insinuations, we are not a country of anti-Semites.
I demand that TVN and Warner Bros. Discovery restore journalistic standards,” he added.
Olejnik later took to social media to clarify her position.
“I apologize to all my viewers if I was not precise and clear enough. It was not my intention to make any insinuations, just like Minister Sikorski, I believe that Poland is not a country of anti-Semites!” she wrote on Instagram.
