Liberals in the Western world have begun sounding the alarm bells over their perceived “threat to democracy” as a meeting of two of their biggest political foes is to take place on Friday, March 8th. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will visit former U.S. President Donald Trump at the latter’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, in what will be a discussion on how to achieve peace in Europe, and how to return to normality in American-Hungarian diplomatic relations.
Trump has a good chance of returning to the White House after his one remaining rival in the Republican primaries, Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race after suffering heavy losses to Trump in 14 out of 15 states in Republican primary elections on ‘Super Tuesday,’ March 5th. According to an exit poll conducted by Edison Research, American voters are dissatisfied with the way the country is being run under Democratic President Joe Biden, with the state of the economy and the migration crisis weighing especially heavily on their minds.
Conservative leader Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party are also preparing for elections in June, when European Parliament and local council seats, including the top mayoral prize in Budapest will be up for grabs. Fidesz has won every national, local and European election for the past fifteen years, winning by a comfortable majority every time. Hungarian voters have seen a significant improvement in their standard of living, and have overwhelmingly supported the pro-family policies, the anti-immigration steps, and the Christian, conservative values of the government.
Both Trump and Orbán have been outspoken conservative leaders on issues such as the threat of migration, islamic terrorism, or the woke culture embraced by liberals on both sides of the Atlantic, and have also diverged from mainstream thinking on conflicts such as the war in Ukraine. Orbán has praised Trump many times for being a peace-broker instead of an interventionist like many of his predecessors. The former president mediated bilateral agreements between Israel and two Arabic countries, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, bringing a higher degree of stability to the region. While almost all other EU nations are sending weapons to Ukraine in its defence against invading Russia, Orbán has refused to do so, saying the arming of Ukraine only increases the death toll. He has called for peace talks to begin as soon as possible, and said reelecting Trump would bring an end to the war. “The only chance of the world for a relatively fast peace deal is political change in the United States, and this is linked to who is the president,” he recently said.
This will be their second meeting since Trump left the White House in 2021. They previously met in August 2022 at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club when Orbán travelled to the United States to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas. Trump and Orbán have praised each other in recent years. In April 2023, when charges were filed in the first of Trump’s four criminal cases, Orbán posted a message of support for Trump urging him to “keep on fighting.” Trump in early 2022 said he was giving his “complete support and endorsement” to Orbán’s reelection campaign that year.
Both of them have contributed to a strengthening of ties between Republicans and conservative European parties. Hungarian conservatives have been regular visitors in the United States, have hosted their own regional version of CPAC in Hungary, and will do so again in April. Orbán has said the U.S. and European elections this year would be crucial as conservatives in Europe and the U.S. must fight together to “reconquer” institutions in Washington and Brussels from liberals who threaten Western civilisation. Hungary has been punished by EU institutions, its EU funds frozen for political reasons under the pretence of “rule-of-law violations” and “democratic backsliding.” American-Hungarian relations have also seriously deteriorated, with Joe Biden’s liberal Ambassador in Hungary, David Pressman, regularly criticising the Budapest Government.
While Trump has influenced the Republican Party, Orbán has had an effect on European politics, making the point that steering clear of mainstream liberal ideas and replacing it with a conservative, sovereignist approach can be a successful model, if it has the backing of the population.
Western liberals are naturally fretting over the impact of what a return to conservatism in the U.S. and a rise of anti-globalist parties in Europe at the EU elections could mean. It is no surprise that they have begun lambasting Trump and Orbán before their meeting on Friday.
Progressive U.S. outlet The New Republic published a podcast entitled “Why Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Meeting With Viktor Orbán Should Terrify Us All,” in which editor and author Jacob Heilbrunn calls Trump and Orbán “strongmen” who “despise democracy,” making the outrageous and false claim that the Hungarian Prime Minister “would like to see Putin conquer much of Ukraine, perhaps Hungary would receive some of the irredentist territory it covets from Ukraine as well.” In fact, Orbán has specifically emphasised on more than one occasion that Russia’s attack was a gross violation of international law, and that Hungary supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Left-wing U.S. media channel MSNBC lashed out as well, claiming “Trump’s Mar-a-Lago playdate with Orbán is cause for alarm.” The article argues that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn state bans on Trump running for election, “gave Trump a potential pathway to impose on the U.S. the very kind of anti-democratic rule that Orbán has instituted in Hungary.” The article cited a previous “analysis” by The Washington Post which claims that “Hungary’s electoral playing field is heavily tilted against the opposition.” While Fidesz has indeed redrawn some of the electoral districts—a practice well known in the United States as gerrymandering—its victories have been so resounding (52.5% in 2022) that it would have gained a comfortable majority in parliament, no matter what kind of election system it would have had to contend in. Not to mention the fact that in the last local elections five years ago, left-wing parties made huge gains in the capital, Budapest, winning the mayoral seat, proving that democracy in Hungary does work.
But liberal opinions are not the only voices in the United States. Conservative publication The Washington Times makes the exact opposite case for why a Trump-Orbán alliance is good for the world. As author Bryan E. Leib writes:
They are aligned on many conservative values, particularly on issues such as traditional family values, religious freedom, and opposition to progressive social policies and funding never-ending wars. They both represent political outsiders fighting against a corrupt establishment which resonates deeply with segments of their populations who feel marginalized or neglected and fed up with the woke nonsense. As we navigate an increasingly turbulent era of global politics, I believe it to be critical for Trump and Orbán to lead a global coalition that puts forth conservative and traditional values of border security, traditional genders, cutting wasteful spending, and protecting our children from the woke nonsense.
