If the former president were back in office, there would be “no war afflicting Europe,” the Hungarian leader told a conservative rally
Donald Trump shakes hands with Viktor Orban at the White House in Washington DC, May 13, 2019 © AP / Evan Vucci
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has endorsed former US President Donald Trump’s re-election bid, urging Trump to “come back” and resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Orban, a fierce critic of globalism and liberalism, also backed Trump’s two previous presidential campaigns.
“I’m sure if President Trump were president today there’d be no war afflicting Europe and Ukraine,” Orban said in Budapest on Thursday. “Come back, Mr. President, make America great again and bring us peace.”
Both Trump and Orban have repeatedly condemned US President Joe Biden for supplying Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, both arguing that doing so risks escalating the conflict into a “third world war.”
Trump has claimed on multiple occasions that if elected, he would “negotiate an end to this horrible war within 24 hours,” while Orban stated last year that he believes the conflict never would have broken out had Trump won a second term in office in 2020.
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Orban delivered his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a Hungarian offshoot of the annual American right-wing conference. Throughout his speech, Orban touched on populist themes regularly invoked by Trump, decrying transgender ideology, mass immigration, and US-backed ‘color revolutions’ in the Middle East and former Soviet Union.
Orban has made no secret of his support for Trump. On the eve of Trump’s appearance before a New York court to face campaign finance charges last month, Orban took to Twitter to urge the embattled Republican to “keep on fighting,” adding “we are with you.” Years earlier, the Hungarian premier was the first foreign leader to endorse Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, and backed Trump’s reelection bid in 2020.
In office since 2010, Orban has forged links with a host of prominent names on the American right, speaking at CPAC in Texas last year and hosting former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, among others, in Budapest.
Orban sees his struggle – against the liberal bureaucracy in Brussels – as analogous to Trump’s campaign against those he calls “America Last globalists” in Washington. “The two main shrines of modern democracy, Washington and Brussels, are still in liberal hands,” Orban said on Thursday. “Let’s make sure that changes.”
