French President Francois Hollande issued a scathing criticism of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, describing him as “sickening.”

“His excesses make you want to retch, even in the United States, especially when — as was Donald Trump’s case — he speaks ill of a soldier, of the memory of a soldier,” Hollande told journalists in Paris, according to the AFP news agency.

He was referring to the latest controversy surrounding Trump’s criticism over the Muslim parents of a slain American soldier who spoke at last week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Hollande criticized Trump’s “hurtful and humiliating comments”.

“Democracy is also at stake, as we see more and more people tempted by authoritarianism,” he said, “especially” in the United States.

“Should the American people choose Trump, there will be consequences, because a U.S. election is a global election,” he warned, according to AFP.

Hollande has in the past warned that a Trump presidency would be “dangerous” and “complicate” relations between Europe and the United States.

“Those who say that Donald Trump could not possibly become the next president of the United States are the same ones who thought that Brexit would never be voted in,” the French president said in June, adding that Trump was running on the kind of slogans peddled by the extreme right in France and elsewhere in Europe.

Trump’s presence in the White House “would complicate relations between Europe and the United States,” he added.

Trump has caused an uproar both at home and abroad due to his comments calling to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S. due to security concerns, as well as his call to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

His proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States drew the ire, among others, of former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the idea “stupid, divisive and wrong”.