This May 13, 2019, pride can be seen on the face of Viktor Orbán, warmly received at the White House. In the Oval Office, President Donald Trump salutes the “terrific work” of the Hungarian, “respected throughout Europe”. A consecration for the illiberal leader, the only European leader to have burst the champagne after the victory of Donald Trump in 2016.
Eight years later, Orbán sees the Republican candidate as “the last chance to maintain American global supremacy” and is counting on this “man of peace” to end the war in Ukraine and the Middle East. Over time, the two men continued to grow closer against a backdrop of hostility to migrants, exaltation of traditional values, hatred towards progressives and the fight against “wokism”.
This year again, Trump received Orbán twice at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. During his first visit, on July 11, Orbán summarized his criticized “peace mission” to kyiv, Moscow then Beijing. During the summer of 2022, Orbán went to see Trump at his golf course in New Jersey before flying to Dallas for CPAC, the major political meeting of American Republicans created in 1974. A forum now swallowed up by Trumpists.
“God, Homeland, Family”
It was in 2020, after the defeat of the Republican candidate against Joe Biden, that Orbán’s Fidesz formation and think tanks favorable to the Hungarian leader approached the Trump galaxy. Objective: unite conservatives from the Danube to the Potomac. The European version of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), organized in Hungary, symbolizes this dynamic. The event is held under the aegis of the ultraconservative “Alapjogokért Központ” institute, created in 2013 in Budapest. Jordan Bardella participated in the inaugural edition. The 2024 vintage notably welcomed the Dutch populist Geert Wilders, the Spaniard Santiago Abascal and a slew of pro-Donald Trump Republicans.
“God, Fatherland and Family unite American and Hungarian conservatives. We defend our age-old traditions, ethics and common sense. There has always been more convergence than divergence and we are delighted that this simple truth is accepted on both sides of the Atlantic”, explains political scientist Miklós Szánthó, director of Alapjogokért and coordinator of the high mass.
The process also works the other way. An oasis for national conservatives, Budapest attracts figures from the American alt-right such as traditionalist Christian writer Rod Dreher and political theorist Gladden Pappin, a figure of the religious right. Pappin chairs the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, whose reports are consulted by Viktor Orbán and his inner circle.
Based in Budapest since 2022, Rod Dreher travels across Europe on behalf of the Danube Institute. A place of reflection founded in 2013, led by a former writer of Margaret Thatcher (John O’Sullivan) and supervised by a Hungarian state foundation (Batthyány Lajos Alapitvány). His job: to set up a network of intellectuals, journalists and religious leaders to unite conservatives from all backgrounds.
Tucker Carlson is won over
Originally from Louisiana, Rod Dreher discovered Budapest in 2019 during a forum on religious freedom. After the event, he met Viktor Orbán and came away delighted. Today, Dreher is used to defending his champion in one of the city’s Scruton cafes, haunts of the local right-wing intelligentsia named in homage to the British philosopher Roger Scruton. According to him, Orbán embodies a “bulldozer” fighting “wokism” and “Brussels”. He “is not Putin’s dog” and the United States is “throwing Hungary into the arms of Beijing”, pleads Dreher.
Author of several bestsellers including The Benedictine Wager (2017), this advocate of the Trump-Orbán rapprochement claims to have recommended Hungary to his “friend” Tucker Carlson, the former star host of the conservative Fox News channel. In 2021, Carlson presented a special week of his show Tucker Carlson Tonight from Hungary, accompanied by a laudatory documentary on Orbán’s fight against billionaire George Soros and a complacent interview with the European Trump.
Dreher, Pappin and Carlson are not Orbán’s only “American friends”. Jeremy Carl, a Republican commentator, stayed at the Danube Institute before Dreher. At the beginning of April 2022, in the wake of Orbán’s resounding re-election, this former member of the Trump administration was listed on the conservative opinion site American Greatness All what the American right could learn from the Hungarian.
Today, Carl works on immigration, multiculturalism, and nationalism for the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that was an early defender of Trump. “Orbán is neither authoritarian nor fascist. He defends the national interest and the protection of borders like Trump, values pro-family positions and understands the value of realpolitik,” greets Carl from Montana.
Pivotal of the system, the Danube Institute
The Danube Institute is one of the pillars of Orbán’s ideological promotion across the Atlantic. In addition to Dreher and Carl, the institute paid activist Christopher Rufo and journalist Michael O’Shea, both pro-Trump, to glorify Magyar power in articles aimed at the American public.
Above all, the institute collaborates closely with the Heritage Foundation, the “think tank” behind the Trumpian “Project 2025” roadmap. Orbán claims to have inspired this radical program presented last May in Budapest by Heritage. According to the Heritage/Danube agreement, four Heritage researchers arrive at the institute each year. The agreement also includes an annual symposium on geopolitics and security.
At the end of November 2022, the boss of Heritage, Kevin Roberts, spoke with Viktor Orbán at the Carmelite monastery in Budapest, HQ of the Magyar executive. At the end of the discussion, Roberts said he was “honored” to have spoken with the Hungarian Prime Minister, saluting his “movement which fights for truth, tradition and families”. A message published on the X network by Elon Musk, fan of Trump and Orbán.
It was also with Kevin Roberts that, on March 7 in Washington, Orbán outlined the future of Hungarian-American relations during a conference chaired by Heritage. When contacted, Heritage did not respond to our questions about its links to Budapest and the Orbán-Trump connection. Very influential during the Reagan and Trump eras, the laboratory officially refutes any collusion with Orbán.
A school for pro-Orbán executives
In Budapest, the pro-Orbán executive school, Mathias Corvinus Collegium, which aims to become a “hub” for conservative thought, also contributes to the dissemination of illiberal ideas. An “educational” program pampers American students and scholars. From September to June, they conduct research, attend conferences and workshops, travel around Hungary, learn Magyar and discover the basics of Hungarian culture.
The chairman of the board of directors, Balázs Orbán, also political director of Viktor Orbán, is a linchpin of Orbáno-Trumpian connectivity. He escorted Orbán to the United States, gave several interviews to Tucker Carlson and opened the Heritage/Danube Institute geopolitical summit this fall.
Proof that Trumpism also infuses Hungary, Orbán adopted the slogan “Make Europe Great Again”, a perfect copy of Trump’s “Make America Great Again”! Clearly, if Donald Trump joins the White House, the champagne corks will pop in Budapest.
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