Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to meet with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, will fly to Mar-a-Lago on Thursday to meet with Donald Trump, according to two sources with knowledge of the meeting.
Orbán has enraged his Nato allies by meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping en route to the alliance’s summit in Washington DC. He has also met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv, and is said to be quietly negotiating his own ceasefire plan without consulting either the Biden administration or other EU countries.
The two men will meet at Mar-a-Lago at 7pm, a source close to Trump said. Orban’s 606 Dassault Falcon jet was one of the several international planes that flew into Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday to attend the 2024 Nato summit. As of 10.30am eastern time on Thursday, the Hungarian military plane was still parked in Maryland.
Orbán did not discuss details of his negotiations with Putin or Xi with the Biden administration. Three sources briefed on the summit preparations said that he did not ask for a bilateral meeting with Joe Biden. EU countries have complained that Orbán is negotiating without their consent as Hungary currently holds the presidency of the European Council.
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Orbán and his campaign advisers have fully backed Trump for re-election in November. His foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, told Reuters: “We see a chance for peace if President Trump is winning. We see a chance for good Hungary-US relationships if President Trump is winning.”
Orbán “wants to be the Trump guy in Europe if Trump wins the election so that then he can be … the one who can open the White House door for Europe”, a European Union diplomat told the Guardian.
Hungary will continue to hold the European Council presidency through the end of the year, coinciding with a period when Trump could be president-elect. “So for the last month before the swearing in he can be the European person in Washington making deals for everyone,” the diplomat said.
Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs will hold a closed-door meeting today at noon ET with the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank in Washington according to an email seen by the Guardian. The event is titled “on the sidelines of the Nato summit” and is focused around US and European security. Heritage regularly holds meetings with the Hungarian government foreign policy institution.