THE TRUMPISTS HAVE NO QUARREL WITH VLAD AND XI:

Also, a minor detail: In the speech you delivered--sponsored by a government-friendly institution, the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, that has, by the way, received billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer money--you ripped into former President Barack Obama for living in "a $30 million estate" (actually $12 million) "on an island off the coast of Massachusetts" despite never having worked in the private sector. It's not my place to evaluate Mr. Obama, of course, but your remarks made me think of Hungary and our own prime minister, who has been a politician all his life and is just finishing up his own mansion, one built on the ruins of a former ducal estate and estimated to be worth at least $20 million.

On your show you said that Orbán is a "Western-style conservative." That might have been true fifteen years ago, when he gave speeches that were truly Atlanticist and frequently criticized Russia and totalitarian regimes. Since he's been in government, however, Orbán has moved away from Europe, the West, and the United States. Now he's making economic gestures toward, and cozying up with, Eastern dictators. It's worth thinking about the fact that during the Trump administration, according to some reports, NATO allies refused to share sensitive information with their Hungarian counterparts on account of Orbán's commitments to Russia and China. Also during the Trump presidency, two Russian arms dealers were arrested in Hungary at the request of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Eventually they were extradited to Russia despite U.S. protests. Hungary is having a nuclear power plant built, not by the country's Western allies, but by the Russian state-owned company Rosatom. On top of that, Orbán has indebted Hungary to China through completely unnecessary investments (with the participation of his oligarchs). Soon the Chinese Communist Party will be opening up an enormous university in my country. Meanwhile, the Russians have established a bank headquarters in Hungary's capital, a bank which was used in the past for espionage.

A clear sign of our prime minister's Eastern commitments is that the prime minister's office deleted the critical comments you made about Chinese President Xi Jinping when posting your interview with Orbán on its webpage. The government-friendly institution transmitting your speech also censored a sentence about mask mandates that was embarrassing for the Hungarian government.

But such are your hosts.

Dear Mr. Carlson! You've been misled by your hosts. Viktor Orbán is not building a conservative Disneyland in Hungary, but a Russian and Chinese beachhead while personally enriching himself. For him conservative values are an alibi. The next time you have the good fortune to come to Hungary, look me up, and I will offer you the red pill of Morpheus's Hungarian Matrix, and "show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." The choice is yours.

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