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US-HUNGARY-TRUMP-POLITICS
Hungary PM hails ‘icon’ Trump’s isolationist UN speech
BUDAPEST, Sept 28, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
hailed Friday US President Donald Trump’s isolationist speech at the United
Nations as marking a welcome end to American interference in other countries’
affairs.
In a robust address to the UN General Assembly, Trump denounced Tuesday a
“globalist” view of the world, and signalled his commitment to following an
“America First” foreign policy.
“In the last few decades the US took on some kind of role of making the
world better that in fact was contrary to American interests, that’s what
President Trump spoke about,” Orban said on Hungarian public radio.
The leader of the world’s most powerful country had now “declared the end
of that policy,” according to the Hungarian premier, one of Trump’s biggest
supporters in Europe.
Under previous administrations, the “US thought it knows what is good,
moral, just, and how the world should be, but we felt that… it wanted to
impose its will on the whole world, for example on Hungary too,” Orban said.
Trump’s approach means the US can now be viewed differently, the prime
minister added.
“We don’t have to defend ourselves against it, or its incompetent attempts
to wield cultural influence, but rather can now try to build a partnership on
the basis of interests.”
The fiercely nationalist Orban was one of the first world leaders to
congratulate Trump after his shock election victory in 2016, and has
regularly praised the US leader’s immigration and security policies.
Trump is increasingly regarded globally as “a phenomenon, an icon…
someone who represents something much more than himself,” he said Friday.
After coming to power in 2010, the maverick Hungarian was often accused by
Washington of steering his country away from democratic norms.
Former President Barack Obama and Trump’s defeated election rival Hillary
Clinton both warned Hungary against clamping down on the judiciary, press,
and civil society organisations.
Orban said Friday that US policy towards Hungary in recent decades had
often been “unfavourable”.
“I suffered so much with (Clinton) that I cannot even tell you,” he said.
BSS/AFP/RY/1825 hrs