During a re-election campaign rally in Clive, Iowa on Monday, 16 October, Former US President Donald Trump praised Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary in front of thousands of his enthusiastic supporters.
While on stage at the Horizon Events Center, President Trump had this to say about PM Orbán:
‘He’s Viktor Orbán. Everybody heard of him? He’s only the strongest leader, very powerful man…It’s danger, death, and destruction all over the world, that’s what it’s been, it’s been a disaster. Whether it’s the borders, whether it’s the Middle East, whether it’s Ukraine…Everything is broken, the whole world is broken. A great gentleman, the head of Hungary, he said something the other day…They were asking him “What would you recommend to Joe Biden to straighten out the world?”. He said: “There’s only one thing you can do, only one thing. Put Trump back,”, he said, “You’d better put Trump back.”’
Here, President Trump is referencing an August 2023 interview PM Orbán had with Tucker Carlson, in which he made the point that the only way the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war could end is if Donald Trump were to take back the White House in next year’s presidential election.
This wasn’t the first time the two statesmen publicly showed their appreciation of each other.
President Trump hosted Viktor Orbán in the White House in May 2019. Also, ever since President Trump left office, PM Orbán has shown his clear preference for him over incumbent President Joe Biden.
At CPAC Hungary 2023, back in May of this year, PM Orbán shared very similar sentiments to the ones expressed in his interview with Tucker Carlson. In May, he addressed Donald Trump directly, saying: ‘Please come back, Mr President!’. In response, President Trump recorded an exclusive video message for the Budapest conference.
The Hungarian head of government also gave Trump his public support when he was hit with his first set of felony charges, back in April. He also touched on the first-ever presidential indictments in his interview with Tucker Carlson, referenced by Trump. When asked if he would ever consider hindering his political opponents with criminal charges, PM Orbán categorically said no, ‘because that’s what the Communists did’.
What the American Press is Talking About
Evidently, the domestic US media did not pick up on the 45th POTUS’s kind words about the Hungarian Prime Minister, especially since their good relationship is already well documented, as cited above.
Instead, media outlets such as The Associated Press focused on the part of Trump’s campaign speech in Clive, IA where he vowed to ban refugees from Gaza to minimize the terror threat in the country. He also pledged to reinstate the travel ban on Muslim-majority countries he had issued at the beginning of his first term in office on Muslim-majority countries.
Some other press wrote about Donald Trump continuing to claim that he is being prosecuted for political reasons at the order of President Biden, despite a federal judge issuing a ‘gag order’ barring him from talking disparagingly about public servants working in the American court system.
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