U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump has invited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to visit him in Washington D.C.
The Prime Minister said that Mr. Trump then praised the Hungarian government and called the people of Hungary “brave freedom fighters” during a telephone conversation on Thursday night, Hungarian paper Magyar Hirlap reports.
Mr. Orbán also noted that Trump congratulated Hungary for its economic success in recent years saying that he has called the nation’s achievements over the past six years “outstanding”.
After being invited to Washington D.C., Orbán said: “I told him that I hadn’t been there for a long time as I had been treated as a ‘black sheep’, to which he replied, laughing, ‘Me too’.”
On Mr. Trump’s open attitudes toward Hungary, the prime minister said: “He is much more interested in success, efficiency and results than in political theories,” adding: “This is good for us, as the facts are with us. The economic cooperation has always been good, only the ideologies presented obstacles.”
One of the first European politicians to come out in support of Trump, the maverick Hungarian leader has been a fierce opponent of the migrant policies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union’s plans to redistribute migrants across the political bloc.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart London, shortly after the Hungarian migrant referendum, spokesman for the Hungarian government Zoltán Kovács said the Obama administration had left the country feeling abandoned. “My first-hand experience, the experience of the government, [is that] the U.S. has lost interest, and probably with it, knowledge about the region. Europe in general, but most certainly about Central Europe,” he said.
While Mr. Orbán had come out in support of Mr. Trump, Kovács was more cautious than to offer an official governmental endorsement, but did at the time note that the migrant policies of Trump and the Hungarian government aligned.
“If it’s about migration, which seems to be the most acute challenge we face, it’s definitely true that Mr. Trump and the conservative philosophy on migration is a lot closer to us,” he noted.
Hungary, along with neighbours Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, constitute the Visegrad 4 group, who have been a major bloc in opposition of mass migration within the European Union. The V4 now look to the presidential elections in Austria for another potential ally in the anti-mass migration Freedom Party (FPÖ) candidate Norbert Hofer.
After meeting with Czech president Miloš Zeman, Hofer related his intentions for Austria to join the group as well.
Speaking to Breitbart London on the issue, spokesman Kovács said: “Austria has always rather belonged to Central Europe, not the Western part of Europe. With the facts and the consequences of what is happening on the southern and eastern borders of Europe now with migration, it would be an interesting turn and development if the Austrians realised that.”