(AFP) – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel next week to Hungary, the State Department said Monday, after President Donald Trump endorsed its right-wing leader Viktor Orban, who is trailing in polls ahead of April elections. Rubio will travel to Hungary and Slovakia, also led by a right-wing ally of Trump, after addressing the Munich Security Conference, where last year Vice President JD Vance berated the European Union and championed the continent’s far-right.
The trip comes as tensions again rise between the United States and the European Union after Trump mused about seizing Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally. In Budapest on Sunday and Monday, Rubio “will meet with key Hungarian officials to bolster our shared bilateral and regional interests, including our commitment to peace processes to resolve global conflicts and to the US-Hungary energy partnership,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.
Orban is the rare European Union leader to enjoy warm relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has often resisted EU initiatives to support Ukraine. Orban had planned a summit last year between Trump and Putin which was scrapped as US officials became convinced that Russia was unlikely to compromise on Ukraine. Last week Trump endorsed Orban in a social-media posting, calling the European Union’s longest-serving national leader “a true friend, fighter, and WINNER.”
But Orban is facing an unprecedented challenge in his quest for a fifth straight term on April 12, with polls showing him trailing the party of Peter Magyar, a former government insider turned critic. Orban became a hero to many Trump supporters for his hostility to migration during the Syrian refugee crisis a decade ago. When Orban visited the White House last year, Trump granted Hungary an exemption of sanction on Russian oil and gas imports.
Former president Joe Biden had a much more hostile relationship with Orban, whom he accused of “looking for dictatorship” in part by muzzling independent media and campaigning against LGBTQ rights. Rubio will travel Sunday to Slovakia where Prime Minister Robert Fico has also found common cause with Trump. Fico’s recent visit to see Trump in Florida caused a stir when Politico, citing unnamed European diplomats, said that Fico had voiced concern about Trump’s mental state. Both countries denied the account.
Rubio, often seen as the more civil face of the Trump administration, will represent the United States at Munich this year instead of Vance.
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