00:00And for more on this story, I'm joined by Mark Lustau, an affiliated fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study
00:05at Central European University.
00:08Thanks so much for being with us here on France 24.
00:10You know, Marco Rubio said that U.S. ties with Hungary were entering a golden era, but appeared to make
00:17that conditional on the continuation of Orban's leadership.
00:20So we're not really talking so much about the interests of two nations as much as we're talking about the
00:25interests here of two men, namely Donald Trump and Viktor Orban.
00:29Is that how you see this?
00:33What was really remarkable about the meeting today between Marco Rubio and Viktor Orban was all that didn't happen.
00:42There was no movement at all on two of the major issues that Orban has been wanting to use to
00:49boost his chances of re-election in April, namely a potential Trump visit to Budapest.
00:56And then also an extension of the exemption on Russian oil and gas sanctions.
01:03Neither of those issues were addressed, even though Orban has been pushing publicly to get the Trump administration to say
01:11that the exemptions on sanctions will be permanent.
01:15Marco Rubio was asked point blank whether those sanctions will be permanent, and he dodged the question, completely dodged the
01:23question.
01:24So really, to my mind, the Trump or the meeting today between Rubio and Orban did not produce the kind
01:32of movement that Orban really would have liked to have had before the April elections.
01:37Why do you think that is? Any idea?
01:41Well, frankly, Donald Trump is not very good at following up on his promises.
01:48It may be that the two men have a close personal relationship, but Donald Trump himself is not really showing
01:53it.
01:54He, for all of the praise and the flattery that Orban has lavished on Donald Trump over the years, it
02:02doesn't seem to go both ways, at least in terms of concrete actions that the Trump administration can take to
02:09help Orban boost his chances of re-election in April.
02:13And it is indeed the truth that Orban, at least according to all the independent polls, is running behind the
02:21opposition candidate Peter Magyar.
02:22So in Munich, Marco Rubio spoke about how the U.S. and Europe are having this intertwined destiny.
02:29How does that rhetoric square with his visit today with Orban, who really is at odds with the rest of
02:35the EU and NATO?
02:39Well, it doesn't really square very well.
02:43I mean, the Trump administration has been trying, for instance, to broker peace in Ukraine ever since Donald Trump got
02:51back into office in January, and he's failed.
02:54Meanwhile, he's also tried to weaken the NATO alliance from within by sowing dissent within the ranks, the Greenland issue,
03:03as well as any number of other tensions between NATO allies that he's tried to stoke and deepen.
03:13And, you know, at the same time, so it's not at all clear that Donald Trump actually wants to honor
03:20the historical ties of the alliance, of the NATO alliance that have that has really benefited both Europe and North
03:29America and the United States ever since the end of World War II.
03:32You mentioned the elections in April.
03:35What happens if Orban loses?
03:36What happens to this, you know, so-called special relationship the Trump administration has spent so much time cultivating?
03:44Well, it's really unclear what Petar Magyar has done and what has really worked for him so far is that
03:51he's portrayed himself as Viktor Orban without any of the baggage, without any of the negative consequences that Orban has
03:59wrought in his 16 years in power.
04:01And by that, I mean the corruption and also the puppet state, the Russian puppet state that he's created in
04:08terms of foreign policy here in Hungary.
04:10So Magyar has basically been trying to say, listen, I will do everything that you expected Viktor Orban to do
04:18just without any of the bad consequences, any of the stuff that you didn't want.
04:22That's the message that he sent to the Hungarian electorate.
04:25And it's also the message that he sent to Europe and the rest of the world.
04:31He basically has tried to portray himself as a center-right, relatively culturally and politically conservative candidate.
04:38He is pro-EU, but it's a pro-EU stance that is realistic about the kinds of benefits that the
04:45EU can bring to Hungary.
04:47It's EU positivity, but EU skepticism all at the same time in the same package.
04:54OK, we'll have to leave it there, unfortunately.
04:56Mark Lustow, an Affiliated Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University.
05:00Thanks so much for your time and for your insight joining us here on France 24.
Comments