Trump meets with Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and continues his embrace of autocrats
Former President Donald Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee continued his embrace of autocratic leaders who are part of a global backlash against democratic traditions.
Trump meets with Hungarian leader
Orban has become an icon among some conservative populists for promoting what he calls “illiberal democracy,” full of restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. But he also cracked down on his country’s press and judiciary and reshaped the country’s political system to keep his party in power while maintaining the closest relationship with Russia of any country in the European Union.
In the US, Trump’s allies have embraced Orban’s approach. On Thursday, as foreign dignitaries passed through Washington, D.C. ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, Orban skipped the White House and instead spoke at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank overseeing Project 2025, an effort to create a governing plan for Trump’s next term.
Trump meets with Hungarian leader – “Supporting families, fighting against illegal migration and defending the sovereignty of our peoples. This is the common ground for cooperation between the conservative forces of Europe and the US,” Orban wrote on X, formerly Twitter, after his speech at Heritage.
He then flew to Florida, where he met with Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago beach late Friday afternoon. On his Instagram account, Orbán posted footage of him and his staff meeting with Trump and former presidential staff, and then the prime minister walking through the grounds and handing Melania Trump a giant bouquet of flowers.
Trump meets with Hungarian leader
In the video, Trump praised Orban in front of a laughing crowd. “He’s a non-controversial character because he says, ‘This is how it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it.” Right?” Trump said of Hungary’s prime minister. “He’s the boss.
The Trump campaign said late Friday that the two men discussed “a wide range of issues affecting Hungary and the United States, including the paramount importance of strong and secure borders to protect the sovereignty of each nation.”
On the campaign trail in Pennsylvania on Friday, Biden said of Trump: “You know who he met at Mar-a-Lago today? Orbán from Hungary, who has openly said he doesn’t think democracy works, is looking for a dictatorship.”
“I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it,” Biden added.
Orbán’s approach appeals to Trump’s brand of conservatives who have abandoned their embrace of limited government and free markets for a system that sides with their own ideology, said Dalibor Roháč, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“They want to use government tools to reward their friends and punish their opponents, which Orbán has done,” Roháč said.
The meeting also comes as Trump continues to embrace authoritarians of all ideological stripes. He praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean Kim Jong Un. Orbán’s government reciprocated, repeatedly praising the former president.
On Friday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjárto of Palm Beach praised Trump’s “strength” and suggested the world would be more peaceful if he were still president.
“If Donald Trump had been elected president of the United States in 2020, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, would not have erupted and the conflict in the Middle East would have been resolved much more quickly,” he wrote.
Orbán has been Hungary’s prime minister since 2010. The next year, his Fidesz party used its two-thirds majority in the legislature to rewrite the national constitution. She changed the retirement age for judges, forced hundreds of people into early retirement and entrusted the responsibility of appointing new judges to a single political appointee who was widely accused of acting on behalf of Fidesz.
Fidesz later created a new media law and established a nine-member council to serve as the country’s media regulator. All nine members are appointed by Fidesz, which, according to the media watchdog, has contributed to a significant decline in freedom and pluralism of the press.
The country’s legislative lines have been redrawn to protect Fidesz members, and there are no major news outlets left to criticize Orbán’s government, making it nearly impossible for his party to lose the election, analysts say.
