Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a longtime supporter and colleague of U.S. President Donald Trump, was asked by a youth at the MCC Fest about his previous “high expectations” for Trump to end the Russian-Ukrainian war, given that Trump has “been making a different decision every day.” Orbán responded: “Indeed, I thought, since I am an optimist,” that after Trump’s inauguration, “there would be some pushing and shoving, and say, three months would pass, and then the roadmap for how the world would achieve peace would be revealed.” We even based our budget upon this, but “the economic outlook” is “completely different than when there is no war.”
Then Orbán, in perhaps one of his first public criticisms of Trump’s performance: “I thought that the U.S. president would be strong enough to get European leaders to toe the line, whether they liked it or not. And then everyone would have to dance to the same tune. But he wasn’t strong enough. So I don’t see the Russians or the Ukrainians being the problem, because things have always been this way with them, but rather that the U.S. president isn’t strong enough to get European leaders on his side.”
