If This Isn't Stopped, Hungary's Fall Is Inevitable | Balázs Orbán

0:00Hey, Chicagoland! The Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza in Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza in Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home The guy himself who became the prime minister used the words hope and change. These are very familiar to the American ears as well.

0:39And they were saying that everything can be much better without giving up anything, actually. And, you know, they are still in a honeymoon period phrase just 50, 60 days after the election. But the truth is coming up like they had to giving up many issues against Brussels in the field of migration, gender ideology. So we had to accept the migration pact. Rainbow flags are now all over to the streets of Hungary. And, you know, the liberals, I would say they can, especially this progressive type of new liberals, they are very much autoritarians. So they go after you and they go after the political opponents.

1:30And this is what's happening right now.

1:38I'm Dave Rubin. This is The Rubin Report. And joining me today is the former political director to the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, as well as current member of Hungarian parliament and an incoming member of the European parliament in Brussels, my friend Balazs Orban. Balazs, how are you? Hello. Hello, Dave. Thank you very much for having me. We're still alive, which is good news. Well, we connected for... Happy Independence Day. Thank you. Well, I'm very happy to be an American today and always. And I should note that we connected for about 30 seconds before we started recording this.

2:17I said, how are you? You said, don't lose elections. So I think people will know a bit about what we're going to talk about. As your president says, keep winning, keep winning. Keep winning. Well, we have to keep winning. And, you know, we're going to talk about, obviously, the somewhat precarious position that you find yourself in at the moment and that Viktor Orban and, let's say, like-minded people do in your country. And, you know, we're only a few months away from what could be something similar in our country, depending on how the midterms go. So there's a lot of parallels here. And you know how I've just fallen in love with Hungary and the people there.

2:52And you've been so integral in that. So I'm interested to talk to you on a couple fronts. So when I saw you back in March was at CPAC Hungary. It was about, I think, two or three weeks before the election. The general feeling, at least in that room, was that Viktor Orban was going to win. It was going to be a little bit closer than perhaps you would want it to be. but that the bulwark against the EU, the globalists, whatever you want to call it, was going to stay strong and still be centered in Hungary. That did not happen. So where are we at? Well, I suppose what went wrong first, and then we'll get to the current day.

3:33Well, you know, we won five consecutive times elections, so 16 years in power. That's a long time and the last four years I have to say it wasn't easy because in our neighborhood there is a war the Ukrainian Russian war it affects not just the security of everyday the life of everyday people but also the economic situation you know utility costs are going up energy prices This skyrocketing inflation is there. And we Hungarians are fighting very heavily to try to represent the interest of our voters against Brussels. Because here in Europe, they are the ones who are pushing the strategy on the war, on the sanctions, on the green transition, on the migration issue.

4:27They're making very bad decisions. We tried to convince the majority of the Hungarian voters very hard that it's worth to fight for your country, fight for your sovereignty, even if it makes you unpopular among the Brussels elites. I would say we Hungarian conservatives were quite well known all over the world, but we were not liked by the Brusselsian liberals. So how much of that... And they came after us very hard. Yeah. So how much of that do you think in some sense was a function of success in that, as my audience has seen, because I've been there three times in the last three years, I mean, clean, safe cities and a flourishing economy and that you kept the migrants and the, you know, in essence, you kept the invaders out.

5:16You protected your own borders. You paid a price for that. That in some sense, do you think it's just that the people of Hungary did not realize how good you had it? Those other issues notwithstanding. It's not to say everything is perfect, obviously. Of course. And there's still a lot to do. But, you know, ordinary, average Hungarians, they were grown up in this safe and sound environment. And they took it for granted. And they were looking for something new. They were looking for change. The guy himself who became the prime minister used the words hope and change. These are very familiar to the American ears as well.

5:57And they were saying that everything can be much better without giving up anything, actually. And, you know, they are still in a honeymoon period phrase just 50, 60 days after the election. But the truth is coming up like they had to giving up many issues against Brussels in the field of migration. gender ideology. So we had to accept the migration pact. Rainbow flags are now all over to the streets of Hungary. And you know, the liberals, I would say they can, especially this progressive type of new liberals, they are very much autoritarians. So they go after you, and they go after the political opponents.

6:48And this is what's happening right now. So So I hope that it's going to be an eye-opening for the Hungarians. They will realize that if you support the values, you have to stick for that. It's also the case that 2.5 million people voted for Fidesz. So now we are in opposition.

7:13They were portraying us as autocrats, but it turned out that we are Democrats if we lose the election. Right. Victor did not fight the election results. They're now fighting him, which we'll get to in a second. Yeah. Yes. We went to the opposition and now we are fighting for our voters and fighting for the survival of the country. So the job is the same, just the position is different. So explain something to me. So the new prime minister, Peter Magar, what a lot of people were telling me about him when I was there was that, oh, he's not some like lefty, crazy person. He's sort of conservative, but just probably not as strong as Viktor Orban.

7:55So the sense was kind of, oh, if he comes in, maybe it just won't be that bad. But I suspect that's not what your take is now, or that's pretty obvious. No, and you know, that's a usual trick in Europe. So in Europe, how the Brussels mainstream is keeping power is that they always grab people and politicians and political parties from the right. they turn them as to be centrist and they get united with the left together and they form a coalition against the patriots or the sovereignty forces so to say and and they try to represent the interest of liberal Brussels policies this is everywhere this is what's going on in Germany if you think about Merz Friedrich Merz German chancellor at the beginning he seemed to be a a conservative person, but he governs together with the leftists.

8:54Same with Macron, same with Donald Tusk in Poland. So I would call it a usual mainstream European liberal playbook, where you try to find somebody who looks like a conservative, gets united with the left, and turns the country into a direction which is honestly not supported by the majority of the people. Okay. So now they've got Magar who's, you know, he's a young, good looking guy. You mentioned this hope idea. So there are some strange parallels, I guess you could say to Obama, but he's doing, it seems to me he's doing some pretty nefarious things right out of the gate. Can you mention a few of the things that he's doing elect electorally for future elections that, I mean, quite literally affect not only Viktor Orban, but you, and again, you're not related to Viktor Orban, just the same last name, but that, that affect you guys and your ability to run in the future?

9:46Well, you know, when we came into power in 2010, our first decision was a symbolic one. We provided citizenship for the Hungarians who are living abroad, so outside the country of Hungary. That was a big symbolic gesture, very important for all Hungarians. And guess what was their first symbolic decision? They actually banned the Hungarian people to re-elect Viktor Orban if they would want to do so. So actually, they changed the constitution, and they were saying they accepted a lax Orban, where he was saying that he's not allowed to vote Viktor Orban again as a prime minister. But what was their rationale?

10:30I mean, I understand like the private rationale, but what was their public argument? The public argument was that you cannot have a prime minister for more than eight years. You know, in Hungary, that's a parliamentarian system, not a presidential system where it's completely normal. But in a parliamentarian system, the prime minister is elected by the MPs, so the member of parliaments. And the usual thing is the term is unlimited for the PMs. But they accepted a law, So a constitutional modification where they were saying that you cannot be prime minister for more than eight years. And it, of course, affects Viktor Orban's ability to come back as well.

11:20What is this? Well, what do you think Viktor Orban thinks about this now? I mean, is he worried that this is going to end up in some sort of banana republic stuff where they're going to try to jail him and a whole bunch of other things? Well, unfortunately, it seems that that was only the beginning. So now they introduced a new constitutional change where they were saying that if you are an elected member of parliament for like 12 years, you cannot be re-elected again. So, of course, it goes against the Fidesz and the right-wing conservative politicians who are in power, who are like elected politicians for a long, long time.

11:57and now they want to terminate the mandate of the president. In Hungary, the president's role is very symbolic, but he is the one who is signing the new laws, so it's important. And they just introduced the constitutional change that the current president's mandate ends. And they, of course, want to have a new one who would be a party-oriented puppet figure. I think this is the beginning of a constitutional crisis. So if you want to push the country into a constitutional crisis, this is exactly what you should have to do. And honestly, I don't understand why they're doing that. I understand that they want power, and more power the better for them.

12:49But they won the election with a supermajority, majority so they can technically do anything what they want but now they're using that power to go against their opponents just like it happens in the United States and it happens in so many places all over Europe in France you know they want to jail the most popular candidate presidential election secret service is going against the most popular party leaders in Germany election was canceled in Romania, if you remember. So the signals are very varying. Right. And as you point out, what's interesting here is that they just did it so quickly because they won the election fairly handily.

13:30So you'd think they'd say, OK, we can do a few things before we need to do all the sort of crazy stuff. And yet that isn't the case. Yes. And, you know, during the election campaign, we made a calculation, they had 1 ,213 promises, like this is going to be better, this is going to be better, this is going to be, you know, salaries are up, unemployment rate down, taxes down, and so on and so on. But they are not doing anything, actually. So they are not dealing with these issues. They are using their power just to go against their political opponents and secure power. And my question is, you know, if you just won an election against Viktor Orban and you pretend that you are the new guy, why are you so afraid of him coming back if you are ready to keep your promises?

14:26So my fear is that— Well, it's just this incredible way of basically doing everything that you accused him of doing is exactly what they're becoming. I mean, I want to read to you something. You posted this on Twitter, but it's from our friend Rod Dreher, who wrote Live Not By Lies. And he wrote, Hungarian voters turn their country from an icon of national conservative resistance into just another small, secular, liberal European state with a globalist system. As a model for MAGA and other nationalist conservatives in the West, Hungary is over. I've had dinner with you and Rod several times and I think he's one of the clearest thinkers we've got that's pretty depressing I mean where do you see hope right now if you see hope?

15:15Well these are hard words but unfortunately it's true so what you can wait for what you can expect from the current Hungarian government is just that they are going to be very similar like the other European governments Germany, Poland and France. But unfortunately, my problem as a politician, as a national conservative politician, is that in Europe, things are going to a really bad direction. So it's not just the business as usual where governments can come and go and no one really cares about the policy shifts, especially not in the field of international politics, especially not in connection with a medium-sized European country like Hungary.

16:00But nowadays, the situation is really complicated. We have the war. There is a serious risk of escalation. European economy is really going down. The migration issue is not solved at all. We're just going to the other way around. So we try to pretend that everything is okay, but it's far from being okay. hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people are coming in every day to Europe. You see the social tensions. And like there is this power center, which is coordinated and supported by financial means, legal means from Brussels, and it is trying to control everything. You know, like in the UK, Keir Starmer was the most popular politician two years ago.

16:52He was, everybody was expecting change and something, hope and something good. And then just in two years time, things became really ugly. And their only idea was how to go against those people who are criticizing them on Facebook. So I think what hope, we need hope. And the hope comes from Europe. And we European national conservatives have still the responsibility to fight for our country's future. If it's not from a governmental position, then it has to be done from the opposition. Opposition, but it has to be done because otherwise this continent will keep continuing to go down. So what has changed, if anything, has changed at the border so far?

17:44And if the answer to that is nothing, I mean, you anticipate changes, right? Because, I mean, the main thing at CPAC was we're a strong, independent, sovereign nation. We're going to pay the million-dollar euros every day to keep our borders closed. Something is going to change with that. Has there been any announcements on that? Well, so the so-called Migration Pact came into effect. It is a new regulation which is celebrated by all the centrist, former conservative political forces. And they are saying this is the solution. This is how we are going to solve the migration problem. But if you scan through the text, you see that the opposition, actually it's the opposite what is inside the text.

18:29And it's not surprising because it was supported by the left as well. And, you know, according to this new pact, if somebody enters a European country, then all the other member states should take responsibility for that migrant and they have to reallocate the migrant. So if somebody is showing up in Spain, for example, we Hungarians have a responsibility to take the migrant. That's issue number one. And the second is like they are still in love, honestly, politically with the idea of open refugee camps. and the pact itself puts an obligation on all the member states to open these huge refugee camps, which are not closed.

19:18People can move freely from these camps. And actually, it means that sooner or later, the border protection has to be limited and we have to let people in. And I think this is where you lose the game and you lose all your chances because the only chance you have is to stop the people, at least on your borders, and not letting them in unless you want to let them into your country. This is the basic idea behind border control. And the Migration Pack, which is a celebrated legal framework, is actually working against this basic idea of border control. So now the technical configuration is going on, But I'm expecting sooner or later, migrants will realize that the new pass is open and they will put big pressure on the Hungarian borders.

20:15It's just, I mean, I know nobody watching this is surprised, I suppose, but it's just so incredible after 16 years of doing it right. And in essence, you guys now voted in what has destroyed so much of Europe. Yeah. And, you know, I was walking in the European Parliament and by coincidence, I ended up on the courtyard of the Greens. So Green Party, which is a very, very liberal. They let you over there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They didn't know who I am. Most probably this is why I survived. but you know and there were signs on the walls and like all these pro-refugee signs like like refugees welcome bring your families and relatives we let all of them in so it's it's it's it's a suicide it's it's a dangerous suicidal experiment which is going on and it's managed and it's guided by the brussels institutions supranational institutions and the only chance you have is to protect your national sovereignty where you can say no if you want.

21:23So in that, you're going to spend a little more time in Brussels now. I mean, can anything be done? I mean, this is the same stuff everyone's talked about for, you know, a decade now about how backwards everything is in Brussels and the globalists and all that. Sure. Honestly, I think that after, so 2015, the mainstream was, you know, like pro-refugees welcome and everybody can get in and then like in a couple years time many of the politicians are starting to realize that actually the people are rebelling so they are not accepting this way of understanding so there was a there was a first wave when new politicians came new faces who pretend that they are like they have different views on migration they are more tough on the migration issue but in reality nothing happened this is what we were talking about you know and we are here for like 11 years and everybody is celebrating a new law and people will just in a couple months time realize that oh nothing happened actually everything became worse and worse so i hope that the second wave will be about that people will realize that, you know, we need more, we need stronger leaders.

22:48Like we need those who take these things seriously, not just talk about it, not just pretend that they care, but they really take it seriously and they have an action plan how to change the legal financial framework and how to support really the European member states to protect their borders and keep the people out because otherwise it's a European continent as we love it. It's gone. What type of leadership would you like out of the U.S. to whatever extent the U.S. has influence at this point with the EU and with these internal migration situations? Honestly, I think that when President Trump and Vice President J.D.

23:36Vance is talking about the European migration problem, they just are the truth. And like every single normal, rational individual person in Europe knows that, that they just tell the truth. So it's not an anti-European position. Right, right. It's a pro-European position. And they want to help. So I hope that we will be able to unite ourselves because that's a Western civilizational problem. And many things should be done on the international legal frameworks, for example. UN regulations should be changed. International organizations' regulations should be changed. International courts' way of interpreting the law should be changed.

24:30And this can only be done by us Westerners together. So I'm expecting that President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance and the entire administration keep pushing that agenda further and they are looking for partners among the European governments. And we Europeans shouldn't be frustrated about someone is coming and telling the truth, but we should come together and find solutions because otherwise the problem will remain here and will be worse and worse. How worried are you that the ship has sailed to some extent? You know, even in the U.S., one of the things I've been talking about lately is, OK, so we close the border.

25:15That's one thing you have to do. You guys previously had done that. Then you have to do deportations. A lot of people, I would argue, we haven't even done them fast enough here, but EU certainly is not doing them anywhere fast enough. But then it's also, there's a huge homegrown problem. You don't have that in Hungary yet, but they absolutely have that in the UK and in France and in Germany and some other places. So that the numbers at this point are just so massive that to extricate yourself out of this is going to take a series of decisions that almost no leader will be willing to take. really to your point that these leaders come in on the right and they end up you know aligning with the lefties and then they're sort of center lefties at best well but that it's that it's just a numbers thing yeah but you know honestly um but this is this is the people's expectation so like in in in in europe right now the people's expectation is quite simple uh especially invest in European countries.

26:14First, they want somebody who is having an idea of what should be done on the issue of migration. That's number one. So come up with a plan. It has to be based on rule of law. It has to be based on serious legal and political coordinations. But still, like trying to fix the problem. If it takes time, it requires energy. If you have to invest in it, they are ready to support it. You just have to be honest and outspoken with them about this issue. And the second one is the economy. They just simply have an everyday experience that the European economy is going down. So there's an economic decay or at least stagnation.

27:06And they just want to have a serious strategy how to overcome the difficulties. Unfortunately, what I see as like most of the European countries now, they are in a proxy war with Russia, which was the biggest energy importer to Europe. They are in a trade war with China and they are with a political, technological and trade war with the United States of America. So I don't see the strategy behind it. So honestly, I think Europe is in a situation where European people would ready to take tough decisions and ready to make sacrifices as well. Just they want someone who is capable and ready and honest and transparent with them.

28:00Well, we shall see about that. You've referenced the war a couple of times. Obviously, Viktor Orban was probably the loudest, most influential figure in Europe, sort of just saying we shouldn't be involved in this, in essence. That's a bumper sticker version of it. How does this election change Hungary's stance on that? And what do you make of where the war is at? I mean, we're barely talking about it from an American perspective at this point. Yeah. Well, so we still talk a lot about it here in Europe. It's in our neighborhood. there are really bad signs of escalation. So the situation is not getting any better.

28:42Thousands and thousands of people are dying weekly on the front line, both sides. That's a very, very sad story. Honestly, it's a tragedy. And people in Hungary, the overwhelming majority of them, they want peace and they don't want Hungary get involved. Unfortunately, we have now a government which is in line with the Brussels policies where they say that, you know, we should support Ukraine with any mean, financially, weapons, military equipment, and in the longer term, like with soldiers. and this kind of supportive preparatory work is going on. And of course, the new Hungarian government, during the campaign, they were saying that they are not going to change the policies, but immediately after the election, they accepted the new framework where they were saying that they are on the Ukrainian side with the war.

29:48And there is a big debate about Ukraine fast-track accession to the EU, which would, according to our understanding, cause serious problems for European security, agriculture, economy, and so on. And of course, they immediately gave a green line to Ukraine. So the process started very, very early. In that you guys have survived communism, you've survived Nazism, you're a small country, the problems because of good governance for 16 years haven't escalated to the crazy point yet. I mean, is that really the strength that you still have some defenses, even though this is obviously a massive problem or everything you've described here?

30:34Well, yes, but we have a common sense-based society. And they were taking politicians seriously. What we were telling them during the campaign is that we have a huge problem because the situation around us is very complicated. So we have to defend ourselves and we have to protect what we achieved. And the new guy came and he was saying, you know, things could be much better without changing any significant strategic direction of the country. People took him also seriously and they choose to accept that offer. But if they realize that things are changing and the strategic directions getting to be different, I'm pretty sure that the Hungarian people will say, oh, this is not what we were waiting for.

31:29They're still against migration. They're still against the crazy gender ideology. They're still against the war. They want clean streets and a functioning state and a productive economy. So I'm pretty convinced that in Central Europe and in Hungary, the people's mind is still very much in line in general with the national conservative thinking. Now we are representing them from the opposition, but one day it will change if the pressure grows and the liberals try to take over the country, especially from abroad. Then we have to resist. And this is what we were doing for centuries. So we have quite a good experience on that.