Trump 'would love to have Orban's situation in Hungary', US ambassador says

'I can tell you, knowing the president for a good 25 or 30 years, that he would love to have the situation that Viktor Orbán has'

The US ambassador to Hungary has said Donald Trump would “love to have the situation” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has while discussing the nation’s so-called “illiberal democracy.”

David Cornstein, an American businessman and diplomat serving as the US ambassador to Hungary, was discussing the prime minister’s own description of his government as an illiberal democracy in a wide-ranging interview with The Atlantic published Thursday when he made the controversial comments.

An illiberal democracy is effectively a governing system wherein elections are held but liberal freedoms are also violated. Effectively an oxymoron, an illiberal democracy often features intolerance towards minority groups like immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community.

“It’s a question of a personal view, or what the American people, or the president of the United States, think of illiberal democracy, and what its definition is,” Mr Cornstein told the news outlet.

“I can tell you, knowing the president for a good 25 or 30 years, that he would love to have the situation that Viktor Orbán has, but he doesn’t,” he added.

In launching his party’s campaign for the European Parliamentary elections this month, the prime minister presented a seven-point plan against immigration.

Mr Orban called for migration to be controlled by national governments, not European Union bureaucrats and repeated his view that no country should be forced to accept immigrants against its will.

He also urged the EU to stop funding civic groups that support asylum-seekers and said “no one in Europe should suffer discrimination” because they are Christians.

“At stake is whether the EU will have pro-immigration or anti-immigration leaders,” the prime minister told a gathering of Fidesz members and supporters. “We will decide whether to defend our Christian European culture or yield the terrain to multiculturalism.”

Last month, the membership of Mr Orban’s Fidesz party in the largest bloc in the European Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party, was suspended while the prime minister’s policies are scrutinised by an EPP delegation. Some members of the alliance believe Mr Orban has strayed too far from its Christian Democratic values.

Mr Orban, meanwhile, has claimed the People’s Party is “turning left, in a liberal direction and ... toward a Europe of immigrants.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report