In connection with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s meeting with Donald Trump in the former US president’s residence Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director, said Hungary “has many friends” in the United States.
In an interview with public radio on Sunday, Orbán said it was an honor for the Hungarian delegation to be hosted by the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in his own home. Peace had endured in many parts of the world while Trump was president, including in the Middle East and Ukraine, he said. Hungary wants a ceasefire and peace talks, the political director said, adding that President Biden’s “liberal US administration thinks differently”. He added that the world and Europe would be best served if Trump returned to the White House and then established peace. US-Russia talks could end the war with the involvement of Europe and the Ukrainians as well as possible third parties. “But America’s stance on the matter is decisive,” he said. Trump, he said, had warned about the mounting danger of nuclear confrontation, insisting that the US should try to do “something radically different”. Orbán said a ceasefire would open up an opportunity to resolve the security relationship between the West, NATO and Russia in the long run. While not easy, “the sooner we start, the more lives we can save”, he said. The political director said the Biden administration had shown Hungary “ideological hostility”, even though Hungary was a good NATO ally which spent well above 2% of GDP on defence policy and contributed to numerous alliance missions. He insisted that “circles connected to the Democrats finance the Hungarian left”, adding that Biden’s administration was on the wrong side of the Hungarian government and Hungarian people’s opinion. Many Republicans, on the other hand, saw Hungary as a model and an important European ally, he said. Europe, Orbán said, should be an interlocutor to both the current and future leaders of the United States. Western politicians, encouraged by Donald Trump’s stance, were increasingly speaking in favour of peace, and this was in the interest of all Hungarians, he said.