LEE KRAMER'S ROOM: With Views

[jbsliverer]

Blood money and proceeds from the sale of the USA. That's the only money the criminal Traitor trump has been able to get.

Vladimir Putin is sending Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as his personal envoy to visit Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club on Friday for consultations regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Trump has so far successfully blocked the House from approving additional US military aide to Ukraine and Putin is looking for additional assistance from Trump.

Trump regularly praises the right-wing populist in his campaign speeches, recently misidentifying Orbán as the prime minister of Turkey.

The two met in August 2022 at Trump’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club when Orbán traveled to the United States to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in Texas.

Trump in early 2022 said he was giving his “complete support and endorsement” to Orbán’s re-election campaign that year.

In an MSNBC interview late Thursday, Carnegie Endowment scholar Rachel Kleinfeld observed that media was far from the only business over which Orbán has exerted control. Throughout his reign, according to Kleinfeld, businesses across every industry have come under pressure to toe the line of Orbán and his Fidesz party.

Post-communist Hungary, she noted, had been on a “normal” capitalist path prior to the rise of Orbán. “After just eight years he had basically moved into so many fields, with him and his cronies forcing companies to be either paying high taxes or [facing] high levels of regulation, or give up their companies, villainizing companies until they gave up, driving people out of town, that he had basically turned what had been an independent sector into something that was [Orbán and Fidesz deciding] who won and who lost in the business arena.”

Even in parts of the economy that previously had been apolitical — Kleinfeld offered soccer leagues as an example — Orbán created made political loyalty a litmus test. “He made everything into politics,” she said.

Republican political leaders and the board of The Heritage Foundation have said they consider Orbán’s style of governance a model for a future Republican presidential administration.

Viktor Orbán will meet with the Heritage Foundation today and Trump tomorrow.

The European Parliament calls him an autocrat. Trump and Heritage see him as their model to emulate.@amandacarpenter explains what he’s done that they want to copy here. https://t.co/g0Ayb9pnm5

— Ian Bassin 🇺🇦 (@ianbassin) March 7, 2024

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