Friday, November 25, 2016

Birds of a Feather



Donald Trump and Viktor Orban - could this be America's next presidential bromance?

Hungary's prime minister said he'll no longer be considered a "black sheep" in the eyes of the US after speaking with Donald Trump, who has invited him to visit Washington.

In a phone conversation, the president-elect "made it clear he thinks highly of Hungary," Viktor Orban said in an interview published in the Vilaggazdasag business daily on Friday. President Barack Obama has shunned Orban during his two terms, having never held a bilateral meeting with the NATO ally leader and criticizing him for eroding democracy.

Trump "invited me to Washington, and I replied that it's been a while since I've been there, since they treated me like 'black sheep,' " Orban said in the interview, without specifying when the phone call happened. "He laughed and he said they treated him the same way."


In July, Orban became the first leader in Europe to publicly back Trump's presidential bid, arguing that under his leadership, the US wouldn't try to export democracy. The 53-year-old, three-term premier has clashed with the Obama administration and the European Union, who have censured him for having built what he's described as an "illiberal state" modeled on authoritarian regimes including Russia and Turkey.

3 comments:

  1. Orban's an antidemocratic bastard. But of course that's not why the US has been ostracizing him lately, because they don't care about that. They've been ostracizing him lately because his commitment to free trade, the EU and various other political and economic projects backed by the boss have been questionable. It is convenient for the US that he actually is a thug because they don't have to make up so many lies that way. But they don't care about the thuggery per se, half their favourite heads of state are thugs, many worse than Orban.

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  2. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”
    While some might argue that this is actually a two way process, Marx was generally right.
    Living in a tiny country with a small population, having a distinct culture shaped by migrants from Asia who arrived there more than millennium ago and since then struggled to preserve their identity in face of the overwhelming presence of their neighbors, might produce a quite different view of nationhood.
    A..non

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