Tag: Hungary

Putin and Hungary’s Orban helped sour Trump on Ukraine

Washington Post logoPresident Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine for information he could use against political rivals came as he was being urged to adopt a hostile view of that country by its regional adversaries, including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, current and former U.S. officials said.

Trump’s conversations with Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and others reinforced his perception of Ukraine as a hopelessly corrupt country — one that Trump now also appears to believe sought to undermine him in the 2016 U.S. election, the officials said.

Neither of those foreign leaders specifically encouraged Trump to see Ukraine as a potential source of damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, nor did they describe Kyiv as complicit in an unsubstantiated 2016 election conspiracy theory, officials said.

View the complete October 21 article by Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe, John Hudson and Ellen Nakashima on The Washington Post website here.

Hungary’s Leader Was Shunned by Obama, but Has a Friend in Trump Image

The following article by Patrick Kingsley was posted on the New York Times website August 15, 2018:

For years, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, center, has craved validation from Washington, spending millions of dollars on lobbying and to support certain think tanks. Credit: Sean Gallup, Getty Images

BUDAPEST — Across rural Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban dominates the media landscape. His allies control the major regional newspapers, which provide supportive coverage of Mr. Orban’s anti-immigrant agenda and his methodical erosion of the country’s democratic checks and balances. Critical, independent outlets are mostly absent.

But last November, that looked set to change, if modestly, as the State Department announced a $700,000 grant to help nurture independent media outlets in rural Hungary. To the State Department, the grant would continue a longstanding American effort to promote free speech. To the Orban administration, it was another provocation from the United States, a country that had treated the prime minister like a pariah since 2012.

Finalists for the grant were identified. But then, unexpectedly, the selection of a recipient was deferred in July, and the State Department announced that the money might instead be used in other parts of Europe.

View the complete article here.