Rubio Plugs Orbán’s Bid For Another Term After April Elections During A Visit To Budapest | EUROtoday

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday enthusiastically endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s bid to serve a fifth straight time period after upcoming elections in April, emphasizing throughout a go to to Budapest the sturdy private relationship between the nationalist chief and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Orbán, who has led Hungary since 2010, is one in all Trump’s most vocal supporters within the European Union, and has actively curried the U.S. president’s favor main as much as the April 12 vote wherein he’ll face the hardest problem of his final 16 years in energy.

Rubio was within the Hungarian capital for conferences with Orbán and his authorities the place he signed an settlement on U.S.-Hungarian civilian nuclear cooperation that features the doable buy of compact nuclear reactors — often known as small modular reactors or SMRs — in addition to U.S.-supplied nuclear gasoline and spent gasoline storage expertise.

At a information convention in Budapest, Rubio stated U.S.-Hungary relations — which each he and Orbán described as experiencing a “golden age” beneath Trump — transcend mere diplomatic cooperation.

“I’m going to be very blunt with you,” Rubio stated. “The prime minister and the president have a very, very close personal relationship and working relationship, and I think it has been beneficial to our two countries.”

“That person-to-person connection that you’ve established with the president has made all the difference in the world in building this relationship,” Rubio continued, addressing Orbán. “President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success.”

Rubio’s cease in Hungary adopted a go to to Slovakia on Sunday after he beforehand attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

Led by euroskeptic populists who oppose help for Ukraine and vocally again Trump, Slovakia and Hungary are each pleasant territory for Rubio in his push to shore up power agreements with each Central European international locations.

Widely thought of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most dependable advocate within the EU, Orbán has maintained heat relations with the Kremlin regardless of its warfare towards Ukraine whereas constructing ties with Trump and his MAGA — quick for the 2016 Trump marketing campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” — motion.

Orbán has remained firmly dedicated to buying Russian power regardless of efforts by the EU to wean off such provides, and acquired an exemption from U.S. sanctions on Russian power after a November assembly within the White House with Trump.

Rubio wouldn’t specify on Monday how lengthy that exemption would final because the EU plans to part out Russian fossil fuels totally by the tip of 2027.

Apparently trusting that his political and private affinity with Trump might pay even larger dividends, Orbán and his authorities have sought to woo the U.S. chief to Hungary earlier than the pivotal April elections — hoping such a high-profile go to and endorsement would push Orbán, who’s trailing in most polls, over the end line.

On Monday, Orbán advised Rubio that his authorities is able to host any future trilateral peace summit between the United States, Russia and Ukraine, and that Trump has an “open invitation” to Budapest.

He additionally claimed that Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have been searching for to intrude in Hungary’s upcoming elections by criticizing Orbán’s opposition to offering weapons or monetary assist to Kyiv and threats to dam Ukraine’s eventual membership within the EU.

Many in MAGA and the broader conservative world view Hungary as a shining instance of profitable conservative nationalism, regardless of the erosion of its democratic establishments and its standing as one of many EU’s poorest international locations.

Orbán has riffed on Trump’s in style slogan and declared that he and his motion search to “Make Europe Great Again.”

In flip, Trump has praised Orbán’s agency opposition to immigration, exemplified by a fence his authorities erected on Hungary’s southern border in 2015 as lots of of hundreds of refugees fled Syria and different international locations within the Middle East and Africa.

Other U.S. conservatives admire Orbán’s hostility to LGBTQ+ rights. His authorities final yr banned the favored Budapest Pride celebration and allowed facial recognition expertise for use to determine anybody taking part regardless of the ban. It has additionally successfully banned same-sex adoption and same-sex marriage, and disallowed transgender people from altering their intercourse in official paperwork.

Budapest has hosted a number of annual iterations of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, and one other was swiftly rescheduled this yr to fall in March, simply earlier than Hungary’s elections.