Former President Trump is scheduled to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban after the NATO summit in Washington, a source familiar with the plans confirmed.
Orban is scheduled to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Thursday, about a week after drawing criticism for meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, sources confirmed to The Hill.
Trump and Orban have maintained a friendly relationship over the past few years, and last week Orban predicted that Trump would defeat Biden in November, saying “change is a good thing for the world.”
In an interview with Axel Springer Media this month, the Hungarian leader described Trump as a self-made man with a “unique approach to everything.”
“He is a man of peace,” Orban told Politico about Trump. “During his four years in office, he never started a war and he did a lot to bring peace to old conflicts in a very complicated part of the world.”
Many American conservatives have become increasingly supportive of the Hungarian dictator, who has given keynote speeches at Conservative Political Action Conference events, including one in Budapest last year.
Thursday’s meeting came just months after Biden invited Orban to Mar-a-Lago in March of last year. The meeting drew criticism from Biden, who claimed Orban was “seeking a dictatorship.”
Orban has been widely criticized for his ties with Russia, which is in the midst of a war with Ukraine. Ahead of his meeting with Putin earlier this month, he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kiev and said he was proposing “a time-limited ceasefire that would provide an opportunity to accelerate peace talks.”
After his visit to Moscow, Orban flew to Beijing where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, describing China as a stabilizing force amid global turmoil and praising the country’s “constructive and important” peace efforts, the Associated Press reported.
According to the Associated Press, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday that “the United States’ position, the Biden administration’s position, is that we’re not going to consider anything about Ukraine without Ukraine,” appearing to suggest that a meeting between Trump and Orban would be against Ukraine’s interests.
“This adventurism, undertaken without the consent or support of Ukraine, is inconsistent with our policy, with U.S. foreign policy,” Sullivan told reporters, adding that he “cannot speculate on what exactly Mr. Orban might be up to,” according to the Associated Press.
Brett Samuels assisted.
