He is the strongman who inspired Trump - but is Viktor Orbn losing his grip on power?
With Donny JR meeting with Orban--you know there is money to be made for the Trump family!!
He is the strongman who inspired Trump – but is Viktor Orbán losing his grip on power?
Opposition activists and journalists explain why the Orbánisation of the US may fail and how a former ally could end the Hungarian PM’s 15-year reign
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/01/he-is-the-strongman-who-inspired-trump-but-is-viktor-orban-losing-his-grip-on-power?CMP=share_btn_url
Ashifa Kassam and Flora Garamvolgyi in Budapest Sun 1 Jun 2025 01.00 EDT
.................Most had spent hours outside the hotel, hoping to confirm reports that Donald Trump Jr was inside. News of his visit had leaked two days earlier, but much of his agenda remained shrouded in secrecy, save for a meeting with the Hungarian foreign minister.
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Trump and those around him have long talked up Orbán’s Hungary, depicting it, in the words of one Hungarian journalist, as a sort of “Christian conservative Disneyland”. The veneration of its alliance of populism and Christianity has persisted,........
As Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation thinktank that produced Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for Trump’s second term, once put it: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model.”
Orbán, the prime minister who once described Hungary as a “petri dish for illiberalism”, has been lauded by Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon as “Trump before Trump”. The US vice-president, JD Vance, once characterised Orbán’s purge of gender studies in academia as a model to be followed.
The US president last year called him a “very great leader, a very strong man”. He added: “Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong. It’s nice to have a strong man running your country.”
Since Trump began his second term in January, the adoration has seemingly turned to emulation at a frenzied pace. Trump, like Orbán before him, has seized on state powers to pursue rivals, embraced dark rhetoric to demonise political opponents and purge “wokeness” from institutions, in what analysts described as the Orbánisation of America.............................
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Viktor Orbán (top) and Donald Trump.
The US president and those around him have long talked up Orbán’s Hungary Composite: Guardian
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