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Late last week, President Joe Biden briefly chatted with reporters before boarding Air Force One, and one journalist asked whether he was concerned about Donald Trump meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. “If I’m not,” the Democrat said, “you should be.”
The incumbent president went further during a campaign event in Pennsylvania a day later. “You know who he’s meeting with today and — down in Mar-a-Lago? Orbán of Hungary, who stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works,” Biden said, adding, “I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”
The criticisms were clearly warranted. While it’s unlikely that the 2024 presidential election will be decided on Trump’s embrace of foreign autocrats, the Republican’s increasingly overt hostility toward democracy can and should be a major campaign issue, and his willingness to pal around with Orbán is emblematic of a larger truth.
As an Associated Press report summarized, Trump’s meeting with the Hungarian prime minister reflected the Republican’s continued embrace "of autocratic leaders who are part of a global pushback against democratic traditions.”
Orbán has become an icon to some conservative populists for championing what he calls “illiberal democracy,” replete with restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. But he’s also cracked down on the press and judiciary in his country and rejiggered the country’s political system to keep his party in power while maintaining the closest relationship with Russia among all European Union countries.
To be sure, in recent years, as Orbán has gradually chipped away at Hungary’s democracy, Trump has made little effort to hide his admiration for the autocrat.
“There’s a great man, a great leader in Europe, Viktor Orbán,” the presumptive GOP nominee said at a campaign rally in January. “He’s the prime minister of Hungary. He’s a very great leader, a very strong man. Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong. It’s nice to have a strongman running the country.”
Indeed, to the degree that Trump has a standard 2024 stump speech, it now includes gushing praise for Orbán. On the Republican’s social media platform, he also routinely publishes items celebrating the Hungarian leader. “Viktor Orbán is a great leader and man,” Trump wrote in September.
But pay attention to the details of the former president's latest rhetoric.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán,” Trump said Friday night. Referring to Hungarian leader’s autocratic approach, went on to say Orbán is “a non-controversial leader because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss. No, he’s a great leader.”
For those concerned about Trump’s authoritarian impulses, such rhetoric is tough to ignore. It was a timely reminder that the Republican doesn’t embrace foreign autocrats despite their authoritarian style; he embraces foreign autocrats because of their authoritarian style.
In case anyone needs a refresher, The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie explained a while back that Orbán’s Hungary “is corrupt, repressive and authoritarian, a place where democracy is little more than window dressing.” My MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem added:
Orbán’s nativist record is well-known on the right. ... His ethno-nationalist goal of keeping “Hungary for the Hungarians” is laden with anti-Semitic theories that Jewish financiers are destroying the country. ... Orbán’s appeal to the right extends beyond his ultra-nativism. He is also a social traditionalist who has banned gender studies at universities and shot down the legal recognition of trans people.
Aleem’s report added that the Hungarian strongman has taken a series of steps in recent years to undermine democratic institutions, “through measures like consolidation of hundreds of media outlets under the control of political allies, gaming elections and using emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic to dramatically expand executive power.”
It’s against this backdrop that Trump has not only celebrated Orbán, he also welcomed the Hungarian to his glorified country club and celebrated his strongman approach to governing.
Let’s not brush past the larger context: As a rule, foreign heads of state do not visit the United States and spend time with a sitting president’s political rival. Just as a matter of international diplomacy, the circumstances were bizarre.
But even more dramatic was the way in which Trump touted his foreign ally.
What's more, as regular readers know, this keeps happening. Ahead of the 2016 elections, the then-GOP candidate was on record praising Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and even China’s handling of the Tiananmen Square massacre. (Seeing images of brave Chinese democrats standing in defiance in front of tanks, Trump sided with those in the tanks.)
Ahead of the 2024 elections, he’s doing it again. The likely Republican nominee continues to make positive comments about the man who earned the “Butcher of Baghdad” label. He offers gushing admiration for Beijing’s “ruthless” control over China’s population. He struggles to contain how impressed he is with his benefactor in Moscow.
And he applauds Orbán because he simply dictates, “This is the way it’s going to be.”
Trump keeps telling everyone the kind of leader he wants to be. Voters would be wise to listen.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.