“He is the leader of Turkey”: when Donald Trump confounds Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdogan

A nice congratulations to the former President of the United States. In the middle of a campaign meeting for the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump mixed things up by confusing Turkey and Hungary.

In front of his supporters in New Hampshire, the Republican candidate for the US presidential election made sure to greet the Hungarian Prime Minister. “There is a man, Viktor Orban, has anyone heard of him? ” he said to the crowd. “He is probably one of the most powerful leaders in the world. He is the leader of Turkey,” he said, and the president of Turkey is none other than Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

To make matters worse, someone who likes to call Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe” adds that Viktor Orban’s country borders Russia, while neither Hungary nor Russia has a land border with that country.

The only European support for Trump in 2016

This is not the first time Donald Trump has praised the current Hungarian leader. In 2016, Viktor Orban was the only head of government in the EU to support the billionaire in the US presidential elections, after which he was elected president.

Since then, the two men have expressed their admiration several times, most notably in 2019 when the 45th President of the United States received the Hungarian Prime Minister at the White House with great fanfare. He introduced him as a leader “very respected throughout Europe”, while praising him as “probably, like me, a little controversial”, referring in particular to their “fight against illegal immigration”.

Last May, during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a political meeting organized by American conservatives in Budapest, Viktor Orban called for the return of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. He painted a portrait of a man, thanks to whom “there would have been no war in Ukraine if he had remained in power. “Come back, Mr. President. Make America great again and bring us peace,” he concluded.