(Philadelphia) US President Joe Biden criticized his Republican rival Donald Trump on Friday for his meeting with Viktor Orban, saying the Hungarian Prime Minister was seeking to establish a “dictatorship”.
Viktor Orban met his “good friend” Donald Trump on Friday in his stronghold of Florida, the Hungarian Prime Minister being one of the rare leaders in Europe to wish the victory of the Republican candidate in the November presidential election against Democrat Joe Biden.
“Do you know who he’s meeting today at Mar-a-Lago? “, Joe Biden told his supporters during a campaign rally. “Orban of Hungary, who declared outright that he did not think democracy worked and that he was seeking (to establish) dictatorship.”
“I see a future where we defend democracy, not where we weaken it,” he insisted, the 81-year-old Democrat having made this theme one of his campaign arguments against Donald Trump.
On Friday evening, Viktor Orban posted on Facebook a photo of himself alongside the former president with, written in the caption, Trump’s slogan: “Make America great again” .
“The visit focused on building relationships between American and Hungarian conservatives, and on the benefits that could arise from the election of President Trump in November,” Gladden Pappin, aide to M Orban, confirming that the meeting had indeed taken place.
For his part, Joe Biden once again denounced the comments of the 77-year-old former president which, according to him, encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade NATO countries.
Hungary is the only European Union member to have maintained close ties with the Kremlin despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Viktor Orban refuses to send any military support to Ukraine and regularly calls for a ceasefire, convinced that Kyiv cannot win.
Likewise, Donald Trump is pushing his supporters in Congress to block $60 billion in American military aid for Kyiv, defended by President Joe Biden.
“We are not playing dice, it’s just that banking on the return of President Donald Trump is the only sensible approach for Hungary,” declared Viktor Orban at the start of the week.