Hungary’s Orbán gives Trump an ‘illiberal’ roadmap for American conservatives

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is meeting with former President Donald Trump today, after a visit to Washington yesterday, where he met with no one from the Biden administration. Orbán delayed both European aid to Ukraine and Sweden's bid to join NATO.

  Nick Schifrin examines Orbán's relationship with global conservatives and why he's resisted some of the Biden administration's top priorities in Europe.

  (Applause)

• Nick Schifrin:

  From Turkey to Texas.

  Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary (through translator): My country, Hungary, is the Lone Star State of Europe.

  (Cheering and applause)

• Nick Schifrin:

  From Moscow to Mar-a-Lago.

  Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: There's a great man, a great leader in Europe, Viktor Orbán.

• Nick Schifrin:

  A gadfly to what he calls globalists.

• Man:

  There's no problem with so-called Ukraine fatigue, for sure. We have Orbán fatigue now.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Cherished by conservatives.

• Tucker Carlson, Former FOX News Anchor:

  He thinks families are more important than banks. He believes countries need borders.

• Viktor Orbán:

  They hate me and slander me and my country as they hate you and slander you and America you stand for.

  We don't have same-sex marriage and all that kind of things.

• Nick Schifrin:

  This week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Washington, D.C., to meet his American supporters. He spoke at the Heritage Foundation, but met no Biden administration officials.

  And today's meeting with former President Donald Trump comes one month after Orbán effectively gave Trump his endorsement.

• Viktor Orbán:

  And make America great again.

  Gladden Pappin, Hungarian Institute of International Affairs: More and more, we have seen that the liberal international agenda has been pushed everywhere. So, Hungary decided to push back.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Gladden Pappin is the president of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, a research institution attached to the prime minister's office.

• Gladden Pappin:

  After President Trump lost in 2020, a lot of American conservatives, myself included at that time, were looking around to see what a successful form of conservative government looked like. Conservatives can't just stand in opposition. They have to offer something. They can't just be anti-government. They have to offer a vision of governing.

  That is available in Hungary. It's different and distinct.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Domestically, Orbán supporters say he and the governing Fidesz Party support families and their version of family values, including defining marriage between a man and a woman. And they have achieved nearly full employment and offered citizens cheap energy by relying on Russia.

• Gladden Pappin:

  He is showing that a more conservative alternative in government is not only possible, but can be very successful.

• Nick Schifrin:

  But Orbán's critics, who sometimes fill Budapest streets, accuse Orbán of snuffing out free speech, silencing independent media, and neutering the judicial branch to create what Orbán himself called an illiberal state based on national values.

• Kim Lane Scheppele, Princeton University:

  Orbán is actually modeling for the Republican Party in the U.S. how you can actually lead with culture wars and wind up with dictatorship.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Kim Lane Scheppele is a Princeton professor who worked in Hungary's Constitutional Court in the 1990s and has studied Hungarian constitutional law ever since.

  She says Orbán might be Europe's longest-serving head of government, but became so by changing the Constitution and gerrymandering districts to ensure one-party control.

• Kim Lane Scheppele:

  The last free and fair election in Hungary was in 2010. He's since rigged all the other elections. So he doesn't have the whole country behind him, but he will look like a great success because he wins elections overwhelmingly, which he does because he got to write all the rules.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Most recently and most worrying for the U.S., Hungary resisted approving Sweden's bid to join NATO and European Union support for Ukraine. In each case, Orbán got what he wanted, Swedish jets and 10 billion euros the E.U. had frozen over Hungary's violations of the rule of law.

• Kim Lane Scheppele:

  Orbán is trying to rattle the institutions on which America has really relied in Europe, the E.U., NATO, also the Council of Europe, that whole network is really threatened when you have a dictatorship in the midst using this veto power to transactionally change the policies of all those organizations.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Pappin disagrees.

• Gladden Pappin:

  Well, I think he's trying to defend the interests of his own country.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And he says Europe is threatened by an ideological alternative.

• Gladden Pappin:

  I think there is a battle for the heart of the European Union and even for Western civilization itself.

  And I think sometimes the pressure that is put on Hungary's because it is within the West, it is within Europe, but it represents an alternative way, this more conservative approach, which is still very successful.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Orbán provides a road map. His allies believe that road is and leads right.

• Donald Trump :

  Probably, like me, a little bit controversial, but that is OK.

• Nick Schifrin:

  His critics think the road falls off the cliff.

• Kim Lane Scheppele:

  He has outsized influence among people who really have the aspiration to stay in power forever, who need to win elections, and want to do it through whipping up culture wars. This is the recipe that can come to a country near you.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And whether any of that recipe is served up in the U.S. could hinge on the November election.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.