American conservatives embrace Hungary’s authoritarian leader at Budapest conference

American conservatives embrace Hungary’s authoritarian leader at Budapest conference

At a conference center plastered with slogans like “Let’s drain the swamp,” Republican after Republican endorsed harsh immigration policies, crackdowns on LGBTQ rights, and a battle against “woke ideology.” The scene could have been any recent GOP event – except it was taking place roughly 4,000 miles away from the US at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s third annual gathering in Hungary. The visiting GOP dignitaries’ praise for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his authoritarian government showed how the small central European country has become an unlikely model for a potential Trump second term – despite what international observers have described as an alarming backsliding of democratic rights. The American right’s growing embrace of Orbán builds upon millions of dollars that his government has spent on lobbying in the US, and new connections between Hungarian and American conservative think tanks. In his opening speech at the CPAC conference in Budapest last week, Orbán endorsed former President Donald Trump’s reelection bid and painted this year’s elections in the US and European Union in militaristic terms. “Make America great again, make Europe great again!” Orbán declared in English, before continuing in Hungarian: “Go Donald Trump! Go European sovereigntists! Let us saddle up, don our armor, take to the battlefield and let the electoral battle begin.”