For sixteen years, Viktor Orb\u00e1n has dominated Hungarian politics, rewriting rules, consolidating power, and positioning himself as Europe’s leading nationalist and Donald Trump’s closest ally on the continent. But with parliamentary elections approaching on April 12th, his aura of invincibility is finally cracking. Opposition candidate P\u00e9ter Magyar, a conservative former Orb\u00e1n insider, is polling ahead by double digits, and the Trump administration is scrambling to help keep its favorite European in office.<\/p>\n
Krastev explains what most Americans get wrong about Orb\u00e1n: that his real economic patron isn’t Trump but China. Chinese investment in Hungary now exceeds Chinese investment in Germany and France combined, and Beijing’s interest is straightforward: Orb\u00e1n’s willingness to veto any EU anti-China policy. Krastev also breaks down Orb\u00e1n’s ideological roots, arguing he is far closer to Putin than to Trump, anchored in 19th-century Hungarian nationalism and the grief of a nation that lost everything after World War I.<\/p>\n
Together, Krastev and Bremmer look ahead to what an Orb\u00e1n loss would mean for Europe’s far-right parties, for EU policy on Ukraine, and for Trump’s own political brand. “For President Trump and for President Putin,” Krastev says, “Orb\u00e1n losing is going to be their personal loss.” And if Trump’s oldest, best-known European ally falls, being backed by Washington may soon be worth far less than it once was.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, Stitcher<\/a>, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they’re published<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For sixteen years, Viktor Orb\u00e1n has dominated Hungarian politics, rewriting rules, consolidating power, and positioning himself as Europe’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[12,307,9401,9402,9403,5710,350],"class_list":{"0":"post-10449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-viktor-orban","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-gzero-world","11":"tag-ian-bremmer","12":"tag-ivan-krastev","13":"tag-podcast","14":"tag-viktor-orban"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116351305211687556","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}