Republican unease grows over Trump's autocrat 'friend'

Former President Donald Trump has frequently demonstrated an openness towards engaging with authoritarian rulers and has even commended certain controversial methods used by historic autocrats. However, Trump's recent meeting with Hungarian President Viktor Orbán in late August has raised concerns among some members of the Republican Party.

During an interview with Fox News that aired on August 31st, Trump spoke about Orbán in a rather worrying way considering the Hungarian President has been described as an autocrat by several different global news outlets. 

“Viktor Orbán… I mean he’s strong. They consider him strong. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Runs a strong country,” Trump explained while briefly talking about Orbán, with whom he has developed a rather close relationship. 

In 2022, a report from the European Union charged Orbán with creating an “electoral autocracy” in Hungary and it concluded that the country could not be considered a full democracy according to BBC News.

However, the problematic nature of Orbán’s leadership hasn’t stopped former president Trump from inviting the Hungarian President to meet with him several times since being voted out of office by the American people in 2020. 

Orbán met with Trump in March 2024 at the former president's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida which saw Trump call the Hungarian President a “fantastic leader” among many other noteworthy compliments he offered up about Orbán according to The Kyiv Independent. 

Photo Credit: X @RobertDownen_

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orban… He’s the boss, and he’s a great leader, a fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him,” Trump said in a video posted to Orbán’s social media. 

Trump also hosted Orbán at Mar-a-Lago in June 2024 in a meeting that both leaders posted noted on social media focused on how peace could be achieved in Ukraine. Orbán even explained that Trump was going to solve the problem according to a post published on his official X account. 

Photo Credit: X @PM_ViktorOrban

“Given their shared ideology, including affinity for Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposition to arming Ukraine, it’s no surprise that Trump is cozying up to Orbán,” Peter Wade of Rolling Stone wrote about Trump’s latest remark on Orbán. 

However, the cozy character of Trump’s relationship with Orbán has some Republicans worried because they believe that the Hungarian President may be trying to manipulate American politics to push Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy agenda, Rolling Stone reported.  

A report from Politico detailed the concerning nature of Orbán and Hungary’s support of conservative journalistic influences and conservative institutions like the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which is well connected to the MAGA movement. 

“CPI itself is a major arm of Trump’s MAGA movement raising significant sums of money. Its roster includes some of Trump’s most ardent loyalists, such as Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows,” Poilitico’s Heidi Przybyla and Nicholas Vinocur explained. 

Photo Credit: Facebook @ConservativePartnership

In 2022, Hungary partnered with CPI on a public discussion on how to bring about peace in Ukraine that featured Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto and included prominent GOP strategists and national security officials. 

One person familiar with the discussion noted that participants of the meeting were provided with pamphlets that pushed pro-Russian talking points. Politico reported that it obtained one of the documents and published some of it's contents. 

“Russia has the will, strength, and patience to continue war,” one of the documents exolained. “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,” the document continued. This type of cooperation has only continued. 

Politico noted some of the Republican Party’s more hawkish foreign policy members are concerned that “Orbán’s allies have leveraged nonprofits to inject Russian talking points into the Republican agenda.” 

How Trump's relationship with Orbán will affect the country if he wins in November is still unknown, but it is very clear from the former president's recent statements about the Hungarian President that he isn't shying away from their cozy relationship.

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