"Viktor Orban, one of the toughest leaders in the world," on October 10. "He’s a tough person, smart." (October 6). "You know what Viktor Orban said? He said, 'If Trump comes back in, everything's solved.' He said, 'When he ran it, we had no wars, we had no problems.'" (October 2). Whenever Donald Trump talks about foreign policy at his rallies, one reference inevitably comes to his mind: The name of Hungary's nationalist prime minister.
The leader of a small country, with a population of barely 10 million people, one which most Americans would struggle to place on a map of Europe, Orban, 61, has become a geopolitical compass for the Republican candidate in the November 5 US presidential election. He even had the honor of having been quoted twice by Trump during the only debate he held with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, on September 10. Each quote was used to claim that many world leaders allegedly admired the Republican candidate.
Known for his close ties to the Kremlin, Orban has declared that he would "open several bottles of champagne if Trump is back," being convinced that he could restore peace to Ukraine "in 24 hours." "It's fascinating how Orban has managed to leverage this small country as an intermediary between Putin and Trump," noted American journalist Jacob Heilbrunn, who, in February, published America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, in which, among other things, he dissected the ties between Orban and Trump.
Indeed, this close connection has gone far beyond the public flattery the two men regularly give each other. "Hungary has become a model for American conservatives who want to establish an autocracy in the United States," said Heilbrunn. Many Trump supporters, who regret the improvisation that characterized his 2017-2021 term in office, have become fascinated by the way Orban has, since 2010, continuously held on to power in his central European country.
"Orban is literally burrowed into the Trump campaign and is helping to design his governing policy," said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Hungary specialist at Princeton University, New Jersey, notably referring to Project 2025, a document published in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative American think-tank, to provide Trump with a turnkey plan for dominating the government's institutions. "Some parts of it are a mirror image of how Orban came to power in 2010," observed Scheppele.
In particular, the plan was inspired by the way the Hungarian politician has brought his country's judiciary, media and universities to heel, using the pretext of fighting alleged left-wing influence. Although Trump has officially distanced himself from the controversial project, which recommends taking control of the Justice Department, or firing thousands of troublesome civil servants, some of his close associates were heavily involved in writing it, said the researcher.
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