Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó travelled to Florida for a meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump. The meeting took place on Monday at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence and was also attended by Mike Waltz, Trump's future national security adviser.
The Foreign Minister summed up the meeting on his Facebook page by saying: "A good afternoon in Mar-a-Lago: a long conversation with Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Mike Waltz."
Bertalan Havasi, the Prime Minister's Press Chief, told MTI that Gellért Jászai, President-CEO of 4iG, (Hungary's leading integrated service provider in telecommunications, systems integration, space and defence industry as per their website) also participated in the talks.
The last time Orbán was in Mar-a-Lago was on 9 March. That visit was part of the Hungarian leader’s unusual tour in the US, where he met only with various right-wing Republican politicians and lobbyists, not with representatives of the US government. He first attended an event at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, which has set itself the goal of institutionalising Trumpism, then met with Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's former strategic adviser, before travelling to Florida to meet the former president at his residence. The Prime Minister was accompanied on the trip by Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Balázs Orbán, the PM's Political Director, as well as his youngest daughter, 19-year-old Flóra.
Orbán has been building his relationship with Trump very intentionally in recent years, and he did not pull away from him even when he lost the election to Joe Biden in 2020. In the summer of 2022, the Hungarian Prime Minister met with Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Two days later, Orbán spoke at the conservative CPAC convention in Dallas.
At the Republican National Convention in July, Trump mentioned the Hungarian Prime Minister. He said that Orbán is Hungary's "tough prime minister" who knows that China and Russia both fear Trump. And in the televised presidential debate prior to the recent election in the US, Trump said that "Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is one of the most respected leaders in the world, a really strong man, a smart man".
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