Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris made her choice for Vice President yesterday, 6 August. She picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. He has been leading the state since 2019, so the initial attacks on him by Republican politicians and pundits were about his lenient handling of the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020.
POLITICO, however, chose a different angle on the new developments. Within hours of the announcement, they published an article comparing Governor Walz’s attitude toward Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary to that of JD Vance, President Trump’s running mate. It is interesting to see that the US leadership’s relationship with the Hungarian prime minister is such an urgent issue for the writing staff at POLITICO…
To the surprise of no-one, Governor Walz is not a big fan of PM Orbán.
As the POLITICO piece points out, he even went further in rhetoric than President Biden in condemning the long-reigning Hungarian head of government. While President Biden has stated that PM Orbán ‘doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship;’ Governor Walz referred to him as a ‘dictator’ outright. Last month, Governor Walz said ‘A foreign policy that respects our alliances—not cosying up to dictators like [Vladimir] Putin and Orbán—[is] the way to go’. The anti-Orbán remarks have been approvingly noted by the European left, including intellectuals like Italian EU law professor Alberto Alemanno:
That statement is particularly odd given that even at the height of the tensions, members of the Biden administration still referred to Hungary as one of the US allies, while the statement by the Governor seems to be contrasting US allies with dictators, and then grouping Hungary in the latter category. However, it is not certain if he would make such a claim if he were in the federal government, as opposed to running a state government.
Ohio Senator JD Vance’s high regard for Hungarian leadership is also nothing new.
It was well-reported and well-scrutinized by the American media.
The instance POLITICO cites in this piece is his praise of the Orbán administration’s decision to ban critical race theory and critical gender theory from public education. In September 2021, he had this to say in an interview on the podcast Jack Murphy Live:
‘What do you do at the Department of Education? Well, you do what Viktor Orbán has done in Hungary, which is basically to say, “You’re not allowed to teach critical race theory anymore, you’re not allowed to teach critical gender theory anymore…You’re not allowed to do those things and get a dollar of federal money or a dollar of state money”’.
Two popular Republican governors, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Ron DeSantis of Florida have made efforts to tackle the issue of far-left, progressive ideologies being overrepresented in public education already, and voters seem to approve of these measures by them. Thus, highlighting this stance by Senator Vance may not have the effect the author intended to have.
On the other side of the equation, PM Orbán has remained a vocal supporter of President Trump’s bid for re-election—given the contrast between the two VP candidates’ attitudes towards Hungary, that is a very reasonable stance.
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