Trump’s Hostility To Ukraine Sparked By Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban

(L-R)US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister of of Hungary Viktor Orban (DANNY GYS/AFP/Getty Images)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

President Donald Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on May 13, a conversation that primed Trump to be hostile to and suspicious of Ukraine.

John Bolton, former national security adviser, and Fiona Hill, former NSC director for Eurasian and Russian affairs, urged Trump not to take the meeting, but were shouted down by acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, according to the New York Times.

During the meeting, Trump’s perspective on Ukraine was molded by Orban who espouses a dislike of the country shared by Rudy Giuliani and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Just days later, Trump met with the returning U.S. delegation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration and asserted that the Ukrainians were “terrible people.”

 

 

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. Given 15 minutes alone with Trump you could convince him John F Kennedy was running the world from a deep bunker in Roswell, NM.

  2. Avatar for docd docd says:

    The idea that POTUS responds to whoever can shout down the others in the discussion is just one more sign of how low we have sunk. Imagine your child’s principal at school making decisions that way. You would demand that the school board fire that person. This is simply not the way that reasonable people function. And since we know that believe anyone who flatters him, we can assume that the PM of Hungary simply told him that he was the best President that we have ever had, or promised to hold his annual retreat at Doral, or something equally absurd.
    He is a clear and present danger.

  3. The headline here presumes that Trump wasn’t a tool of the Russians before he was even elected President. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that Orban was merely communicating Putin’s latest instruction to Trump during their private meeting.

  4. So terrible that Putin wants to emulate Stalin and kill off a few million Ukrainians?

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

82 more replies

Participants

Avatar for paulw Avatar for fgs Avatar for richardinjax Avatar for cervantes Avatar for steviedee111 Avatar for dont Avatar for thebigragu Avatar for lastroth Avatar for greylady Avatar for tao Avatar for mrf Avatar for benthere Avatar for thunderclapnewman Avatar for castor_troy Avatar for highdesertwizard Avatar for joce_m Avatar for billyjoe Avatar for redhand Avatar for gryka Avatar for dogmaalsocatma Avatar for emiliano4 Avatar for faydout Avatar for Paracelsus Avatar for Swan

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: