Trump’s Alarming Meeting With Foreign Leader Speaks Volumes
Donald Trump is meeting with Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán.
![Viktor Orban and Donald Trump sit and talk](http://images.newrepublic.com/e7872628d5f8a7ce922258f3209fbd4e796048be.jpeg?auto=format&fit=crop&crop=faces&q=65&w=768&h=undefined&ar=3%3A2&ixlib=react-9.0.2&w=768)
While President Joe Biden meets with NATO members in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Donald Trump is having a foreign tête-à-tête of his own—albeit with a member of a starkly different crowd.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is scheduled to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Florida home, just days after the autocratic leader held private meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
The agenda of Trump and Orbán’s meeting is not entirely clear, though the war in Ukraine will likely be a topic of discussion, according to three sources that spoke with Reuters.
The visit will add fuel to growing concerns that Orbán is serving as a proxy between Trump and Putin, reported Bloomberg, and will likely upset a cohort of NATO allies who fear that Orbán’s meeting with the Russian ruler legitimized the country’s claim to the land it has invaded in Ukraine since the war began in 2022.
Foreign policy and national security analyst David Rothkopf slammed Trump’s meeting with Orbán. “Trump meeting Orban opposite NATO Summit immediately following Orban mtg w Putin and Xi is the sort of betrayal of the US that would’ve led to Congressional investigations or worse in the past,” Rothkopf wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Orbán, who was found earlier this year by the European Court of Justice to have violated the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of refugees*, was described by the late Senator John McCain as a “neofascist dictator.” He’s also curried a certain level of idolatry from the contemporary American right, and has become one of Trump’s strongest international allies.
*This article has been amended to clarify the Geneva Conventions that Orban violated.