President-elect Trump and Hungary

Although the President-elect of the United States obviously has no policy towards Hungary yet, a conservative analyst thinks that Viktor Orbán’s early support for his candidacy may have been noticed by his entourage.

Earlier this year, PM Orbán made two remarks in public in support of the opinions of the Republican Presidential nominee, namely on illegal immigration and terrorism (See BudaPost, July 25 and October 29). His spokesman denied that he had taken sides in the contest, but when the result of the Presidential election was made public, the Prime Minister wrote on his Facebook page (in English): „What a (piece of) good news! Democracy is still alive.”

On Válasz, András Zsuppán thinks the Prime Minister took great risk in his early approval of Trump’s candidacy – and won. In a way, his position was also based on cool analysis, since the Clinton team and the State department staff John Kerry inherited from her was vehemently anti-Orbán anyway and he had nothing to lose, it could be argued. Nevertheless, calling Ms Clinton’s migration policies ‘lethal’ for Hungary was a great affront which would have surely been remembered had Hillary Clinton won, Zsuppán remarks. And, he adds, the world expected her to win. PM Justin Trudeau of Canada made an anti-Trump speech in front of the UN General Assembly in September.  Boris Johnson, shortly before becoming Foreign Secretary said he wouldn’t go to New York because he was afraid he might come across Donald Trump there. In the circumstances, taking Trump’s side was a daring move, the conservative commentator thinks. He also believes that it will not be unnoticed in Washington. In his closing remark, Zsuppán draws attention to Mr Orbán’s gut instinct about what ordinary people feel, which often prompts him to take surprising steps against the dominating trends, disregarding well established ideas and the opinion-leaders representing them. This time, he notes, events proved him right.

Tags: Donald Trump, Orbán, US