"SEEMS SHIFTY...":

These days, the distance between Trump and Soros is about much more than personality and aesthetics. The president has become the most powerful among a global chorus of rightwing critics focused on Soros's philanthropic efforts, which fund a broad range of causes they dislike, from minority rights and protecting refugees to liberalising drug policy and combating hate speech. Soros has long had enemies - largely, authoritarian leaders who were wary of his efforts to promote and protect democracy; more recently, this has been amplified by the antisemitic conspiracy theories that ooze from the darker corners of the internet.

It is now rare for a week to go by without a populist politician painting Soros as a ruthless Bond villain with nefarious plans to reshape the planet. Last year, Trump suggested that Soros might be paying illegal migrants to come to the US; in Turkey, President Erdoğan has called him "a man who assigns people to divide nations and shatter them"; in Italy, Matteo Salvini has claimed Soros wants the country "to become a giant refugee camp because he likes slaves". Last month, Soros's financial support for the anti-Brexit Best for Britain group led Jacob Rees-Mogg to call him the "Remoaner-in-chief" in parliament. Nigel Farage has called him "the biggest danger to the entire western world".

As a reporter based in eastern Europe, I have had a ringside seat to the political hostility Soros has faced over the years. I spent a decade in Russia, where Vladimir Putin blamed him for organising revolutions in neighbouring countries; in 2015, his philanthropic foundations were banned from the country as a "threat to state security". Last year I moved to Budapest, the city of Soros's birth, where the far-right Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, had taken Soros-baiting to a new level, erecting thousands of billboards featuring a cackling Soros, warning Hungarians not to let him "have the last laugh".

Now I sit opposite a somewhat frail, elderly man wearing a maroon cardigan, and it feels like a Wizard Of Oz moment. Is this really the power-broker feared by the world's nationalists? Soros turns 90 next year, and his face is creased with age, a distinctive banana-shaped fold of skin under each eye. He has lost much of his hearing, and visitors are given a microphone that connects directly to his hearing aid. He speaks hesitantly, often needing a few seconds to find the right word, and there is a hint of annoyance in his eyes during the pauses - as if the brain is irritated at the mouth for not articulating its thoughts fast enough. But appearances can be deceptive: Soros still maintains a busy work and travel schedule, splitting his weeks between Manhattan and upstate New York with his third wife Tamiko, and spending several months a year on the road.

What sustains him, I ask, particularly given the recent intensity of the attacks he has faced? "It challenges me and therefore it energises me," he says with a smile, in his still-strong Hungarian accent. "When I look at the list of people, or movements, or countries who are attacking me, it makes me feel I must be doing something right. I'm proud of the enemies I have."

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