Former GOP officials sound the alarm over Trump’s embrace of Hungarian PM, Viktor Orbán
The Conservative Partnership Institute, a nerve center for incubating policies for a second Trump administration, co-sponsored a discussion in October 2022 about how to bring “peace in Ukraine” featuring Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto.
Audience members included conservative policy and national security officials and GOP strategists, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Once seated, they were given pamphlets pushing unabashedly pro-Russia talking points.
“Russia has the will, strength, and patience to continue war,” warned the document, which was given to POLITICO by a participant. “U.S aid to Ukraine must be severely constricted and Ukrainian President Zelensky should be encouraged by U.S. leadership to seek armistice and concede Ukraine as a neutral country.”
“If the U.S. continues to enable war, it will result in the destruction of Ukraine and provoke further Russian aggression toward the West, with the potential for nuclear conflict,” it said.
Months before, Russian President Vladimir Putin had awarded Szijjarto an Order of Friendship medal, the highest Russian state decoration that can be given to a foreigner.
The discussion, which CPI held in partnership with another conservative nonprofit called the Counterpoint Institute, was an early part of what’s become a far broader initiative by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to expand his influence around the world. It has included his repeated overtures to former President Donald Trump, who praised Orbán in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in late July.
The Hungarian message is of concern to mainstream Republican foreign-policy officials, past and present, because it seems to be a vehicle for an ongoing influence campaign over Trump and the many groups that are seeking his favor as he battles with Vice President Kamala Harris this fall to regain the American presidency. While Trump, during his time in the White House from 2017-2021, often expressed his personal respect for Putin, the war in Ukraine has made an open relationship between the two diplomatically untenable. Orbán, according to the former GOP officials, is stepping into the void. He has visited Trump in Florida twice this year. [Continue reading…]