President Donald Trump’s meeting with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán was a great success, with the American leader comparing his European counterpart to a twin brother.
Prime Minister Orbán, who won his third consecutive election with a parliamentary super-majority last year, has in many ways been in the vanguard of the national populist insurgency against the left-neoliberal consensus which has prevailed throughout the West for the last forty years.
His platform, which emphasises Hungary’s national identity and Christian heritage and explicitly rejects multiculturalism and mass migration — promoting social cohesion over the former and support for the family and child-rearing over the latter — is popular with voters, but fiercely opposed by the leadership of the European Union, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and so-called “civil society” groups funded by wealthy activists like George Soros, and the media establishment on both sides of the Atlantic.
However, in contrast to his predecessor Barack Obama — and what the Hungarians have described as a “liberal cabal” at the U.S. State Department — the populist-leaning President Trump appears unperturbed by the hyperbolic accusations which have been levelled at the Hungarian leader.
“Viktor Orbán has done a tremendous job in so many different ways. He’s highly respected, respected all over Europe,” he said.
“Probably like me a little bit controversial, but that’s OK. That’s OK. You’ve done a good job. And you’ve kept your country safe,” he told reporters at their Oval Office meeting.
According to U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Cornstein the meeting between Trump and Orbán concluding with the President telling the Hungarian, “It’s like we’re twins.”
“Not everyone agrees with us, not everyone loves us, but look at our results,” he said.
The Hungarian is perhaps best known to American voters for his robust (and for a long time atypical) response to hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants spilling across his country’s borders after Germany’s Angela Merkel invited supposed refugees from the Middle East to come to Europe in unlimited numbers. Mr Orban’s Hungary rapidly rolled out and reinforced a series of southern border barriers which slashed the inflow by over 99 per cent — much as President Trump has been trying to do on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Prime Minister Orbán, for his part, described President Trump as a “strong leader, a clear-headed leader, a goal-oriented man, who knows exactly what he wants,” revealing that he could “feel the difference” compared to his last White House visit almost 20 years ago, when he met with George W Bush.
“Today, there is a different, more ambitious leadership,” Orbán remarked, saying that President Trump “knew everything about Hungary that he had to, and his goal was to establish good co-operation between Hungary and the United States.”