NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 26, 2018 President Donald Trump gestures to emphasize an issue at a press conference held at the Lotte Palace Hotel in the Villard Room (Shutterstock)
President Donald Trump and CPAC want people to believe they support “America First,” but a recent report reveals that at least the latter received literal funding from the Hungarian government.
But those days are apparently over now that Hungary’s newly elected prime minister, Péter Magyar, has taken the reins. Magyar campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, and has pulled funding from the organization with ties to his corrupt opponent former prime minister Viktor Orbán.
“Scandal-plagued CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp posted in response to Magyar’s comments but didn’t address the payment claims, saying only that he was ‘gratified’ that Magyar ‘has invited us back to have CPAC,’’ reported MS NOW's Ja'han Jones on Tuesday. Upon winning and beginning the transition process, Magyar announced that Hungary had donated to CPAC under Orbán but would no longer.
“It’s easy to see how Orbán’s loss could prove injurious to the MAGA movement in a variety of ways,” Jones reported. “With the downfall of Trump’s favorite authoritarian, the U.S. conservative movement appears to be losing its free rein (and apparently some financing) to use Hungary as an ideological testing ground.”
Indeed, the revelation about Hungary and CPAC only underscores deeper ties between America’s far right and its European counterparts. From Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom and Marine Le Pen in France to Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD party and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Trump has done his past to use his political clout to advance the fortunes of overseas counterparts who are perceived as compatible with his own values and self-interests.
Magyar told CNN that “I believe the state should never have financed them in the first place. It was a crime. Mixing party financing with government spending from the state budget is, in my view, a criminal offense,” he said. "CPAC can come to Budapest. They’re very welcome. But not from Hungarian taxpayers’ money. From Fidesz’s money, or Orbán’s buddies’ money — before we take it back."
This is not the first time CPAC has recently had egg on its face. Last month Trump decided not to attend the organization’s annual event for the first time in a decade, allowing the usually pro-Trump event to air grievances against a president from their own party. According to The Conversation, the event demonstrated the overall fizzling of enthusiasm for the MAGA movement.
“There is a pall over the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement,” The Conversation wrote. “Donald Trump overpromised. His public support has fallen. Some “America First” die-hards now openly criticize him.”
They added, “Amid war, economic challenges, democratic backsliding, the Epstein files and Americans shot dead in the street by government agents, Trump’s support is softening and his vow to bring a ‘golden age of America’ is looking more like a political winter for Trump and his MAGA movement.”