President Donald Trump’s meeting with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán was a great success, with the American leader comparing his European counterpart to a twin brother.
Prime Minister Orbán, who won his third consecutive election with a parliamentary super-majority last year, has in many ways been in the vanguard of the national populist insurgency against the left-neoliberal consensus which has prevailed throughout the West for the last forty years.
His platform, which emphasises Hungary’s national identity and Christian heritage and explicitly rejects multiculturalism and mass migration — promoting social cohesion over the former and support for the family and child-rearing over the latter — is popular with voters, but fiercely opposed by the leadership of the European Union, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and so-called “civil society” groups funded by wealthy activists like George Soros, and the media establishment on both sides of the Atlantic.
However, in contrast to his predecessor Barack Obama — and what the Hungarians have described as a “liberal cabal” at the U.S. State Department — the populist-leaning President Trump appears unperturbed by the hyperbolic accusations which have been levelled at the Hungarian leader: “Viktor Orbán has done a tremendous job in so many different ways.