(Headline USA) Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will visit former President Donald Trump next week at his Florida home Mar-a-Lago, according to a person briefed on the plans who was not authorized to disclose them publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The visit was first reported Wednesday night by the New York Times.
The meeting comes as Trump seeks to shift his attention from the Republican primary to the general election, although his hosting of world leaders also allows him to draw contrast with GOP rival Nikki Haley, whose role as Trump’s U.N. ambassador seemed largely ceremonial given his hands-on approach to diplomacy.
Trump’s political standing within his own party seems stronger than ever, having easily won the early presidential Republican primary contests and flexed his influence over GOP members in Congress and the leadership of his political party.
Orbán and Trump have been long allies, and Trump regularly praises the right-wing populist in his campaign speeches. The two met in August 2022 at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club when Orbán traveled to the United States to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas.
In April 2023, when charges were filed in the first of Trump’s four criminal cases, Orbán posted a message of support for Trump urging him to “keep on fighting.”
Trump, in early 2022, said he was giving his “complete support and endorsement” to Orbán’s reelection campaign that year.
Orban, who has been in office since 2010, has promoted what he calls “illiberal democracy.”
He has been criticized by international observers—including the U.S. State Department—for leading an increasingly autocratic system in Hungary, largely do to his firm stance against open borders and loose immigrations laws, which much of Europe has been subjected to, at the risk of losing many countries’ unique cultural identities.
His conservative values have put him in direct conflict with globalist oligarch George Soros, a Hungarian native, who has played a major role in influencing the so-called democracy in corruption-plagued Ukraine.
There has been considerable speculation that leftists working in conjunction with the Biden State Department/CIA and with Soros-backed non-governmental organizations may try to stage a coup in Hungary, similar to the 2014 color revolution that ousted Ukraine’s Russia-friendly government.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
