Zoltán Kovács, state secretary for international communication and relations, said that adhering to the same conservative values could further strengthen cooperation between the Hungarian prime minister and Donald Trump.
Following Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s meeting with the former US president and Republican presidential candidate, in Florida on the weekend, Kovács told public news channel M1 that those shared values include their commitment to peace, their approach to migration and the LGBTQ issue, the “sanctity of the family”, and their economic policy. He said Trump had proven as president that he was “the president of peace,” who, if elected, would urge peaceful solutions to the wars and conflicts. Concerning the war in Ukraine, Kovács noted that Trump, just like the Hungarian government, had been an advocate for peace ever since the war broke out with Russia. Commenting on incumbent US President Joe Biden’s remark that Trump was meeting a politician who “doesn’t think democracy works,” Kovács noted that Hungarian-US relations “work well”, adding that economic cooperation, Hungary’s commitment and its performance of responsibilities as a NATO member were “flawless”. “The [current] ideology-driven US administration does not respect the opinion and the will of the Hungarian people,” he said. Speaking to public broadcaster Kossuth Rádió’s morning program, Kovács said that “as Hungary is in the fourteenth year of a model change, the country now gets a lot more attention in the international press and in the United States”. Commenting on the Hungarian prime minister’s meeting with Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago on Friday, Kovács said “the quality of personal relationships is highly important in politics”.