Senior Fellow for the Center for Fundamental Rights Bryan Leib has been recently interviewed by the Hungarian public television M1. He is considered to be one of the likely appointees to be the next US Ambassador to Hungary, although President Trump has yet to officially make that call, as he himself pointed out in the interview.
‘One thing is for sure: no matter who Donald Trump chooses for the position, they will be much better and much different than the outgoing quote-on-quote “Ambassador” David Pressman, who, as we all know, was more of an activist than a diplomat,’ Leib said to M1. Mr Leib has been a vocal and consistent critic of Ambassador Pressman throughout his tenure in Budapest.
He also stated in the interview that many Hungarians may rightfully feel like ‘respect has been lost in the bilateral relationship between the Hungarian government and the American government,’ however, that is likely to change under President Trump’s second administration, given the great, strong relationship between Prime Minister Orbán and President Trump.
Mr Leib, who has family roots in Hungary, then recanted how Hungary became a major focus of his professional life. In 2023 he was invited by the Center for Fundamental Rights to speak at a Pro-Israel Summit in Budapest. The day he first arrived in Hungary happened to be the fateful date of 7 October 2023, when the terrorist group Hamas launched a series of vicious attacks on Israel. ‘I was in this foreign country. I did not know anyone. But whoever I met, whoever I talked to, they assured me of their love and compassion in relation to the events in Israel,’ he said about this emotional memory.
As for a potential imminent ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, Mr Leib has stated that President Trump has ‘the gravitas and the leadership’ to be able to make that happen and would support such an endeavour since the United States ‘cannot afford to fund an endless war’. He also believes that if a ceasefire deal is, in fact, agreed soon, Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán will also be an important part of the negotiations.
‘One thing I’ve seen over the past two years over and over again is that Hungary, this country of less than 10 million people, is capable of punching above its weight politically in part thanks to the leadership of the country,’ he added.
The topic of conversation then moved to illegal migration. Mr Leib said Hungary is ‘probably the best example’ of how to handle that issue. People no longer feel safe in the major cities of Western Europe, he continued his point, unlike in Hungary, because of this very reason. As for the United States, he criticized the FEMA programme that housed illegal migrants in New York City hotels, saying: ‘That’s not the American dream. The American dream is what my great-grandparents did: they came to the country legally, and even though they did not have anything, they were able to build something. And if you speak to first-generation immigrants, they all feel the same way.’
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