Threats, a below the threshold of kinetic warfare that statesponsored or homegrown actors are waiting to undermine democracy. Host do you think viktor orban is one of those threats . Guest i do. I do not think viktor orban is a democrat. I think he is an autocrat. I think he has cleverly manipulated hungarian politics to suit his end. Host give us a snapshot of his worldview and his rise to power in hungary. Guest this is his fourth consecutive term in office as prime minister. He is perceived as a bulwark of conservativism in europe standing up to bureaucrats trying to get his country to take in more migrants from the middle east, to allow more rights for the lgbtq community. And he has quite cleverly manipulated hungarian politics to allow his party to remain in power. Host why has he made such a in United States politics . Guest he is standing up to this perceived woke progressivism in europe. Bureaucrats are trying to impose laws on hungary like they do with all e. U. Members. He is saying we are not going to do this. We are not going to open our borders. We are not going to allow rights for minorities in our country. I think that is appealing to a certain segment of the american electorate. Host is hungary also a member of nato . Guest it is. Host what has been their view of the invasion of ukraine . Guest pres. Biden s orbans view is probably that it is appalling. He can only say that publicly because he has cozied up to vladimir putin. His countries reliance his country relies on russian gas for heat. There is symmetry between his worldview and putins worldview. Majority rule is better than protecting minority rights. And an ethnic homogeneous state is what they want. Theres a lot of compatibility. Host he is probably popular in own country . Guest he is popular faith but if you look at the last lecture, it seems the tide has turned and he might finally lose an election in hungary. The party was able to manipulate the media environment and electoral laws that disadvantaged opposition candidates. The united candidate was not able to get airtime on television because all the tv channels are dominated by the ruling party. The voting laws allow hungarians wherever they live to vote wherever they want in the country. The ruling party can move voters into opposition areas and have them vote for viktor orban. It is very easy to see how even when the tide was moving against him and public opinion, the ruling party was able to manipulate laws and electoral procedure. Host how big of a country is hungary . How many people . What is the size . Guest i cannot tell you exactly off the top of my head. Probably between 5 million and 10 million if i had to guess. Host you mentioned the perceived symmetry between viktor orban and vladimir putin. His viktor orban in terms of european leaders an outlier or are there other leaders that share similar sentiments . Guest there are. Not many are in power. Poland is probably the closest example to a semi autocratic ruling party that has managed to come to power. You have a number of far right and far left politicians across europe in many countries that look to leaders like viktor orban as an example of what their countries ought to be like. But hungary truly is the outlier. The true outlier. Host how was the syrian refugee crisis in particular a spark to his electoral success . Guest it was hugely important. I think there was an organic backlash to these people into their country. A lot of European Countries took in migrants from that part of the world. Orban categorically said no. It resonated with many parts of the hungarian population. Host the antiimmigration message also resonated politically in the United States. Guest it does. That is where the ties that bind are between segments of the Republican Party and leaders like viktor orban. That is like parts of the american right are courting viktor orban to come to cpac to describe how he and europe have been able to push back against liberalism. Host former trump advisor steve bannon said Something Like orban was trump before trump. What did he mean by that . Guest well, he certainly was on the political stage before donald trump in the United States. Orban has been for well over a decade for molding this bastion of conservativism in europe, and otherwise predominantly liberal europe. Orban understood maybe even before trump that if you manipulate laws and the media to remain in power, you can do so. I think that is why he is so attracted to this sector of the electorate. Host david salvo is Deputy Director for alliance for securing micro c. We are talking about viktor orban and his presence in the United States at cpac and his influence in europe. We welcome your calls and comments at 2027488001 for republicans for democrats, 2027488002 for independence and others, 2027488003 this is at cpac in dallas. Here he is criticizing the News Coverage of his previous speeches. [video clip] you managed to confuse a lot of people by inviting me. [laughter] including the leftist media. I can already see tomorrows headlines. Far right european racist strongman holds speech at conservative conference. [laughter] [applause] i do not want to give them any ideas. They know best how to write papers. Instead, i tell you the truth. In hungary, we introduced the zero tolerance on racism and antisemitism. Those accusing us and those who make these claims are simply idiots. [applause] they are the industrial corporations. Host david salvo, he pretty much pegged the headline right for the washington post. In that article, they write they went ahead with the speech despite orbans latest controversy, a speech in which he railed against europe becoming mixedrace, saying europeans did not want to live with people from the outside of the continent. One of his close advisors resigned in protest calling the speech nonsense. Guest all you have to do is listen to the prime ministers own words. You do not have to read it in the media. He used those words, we do not want to end up with a mixedrace population. I dont know how you could spend that spin at any other way than racist comments. Host lets go to sam in baltimore. Go ahead. Caller how are yall doing this morning . I wanted to say i listen to washington journal on a regular basis. It is like a horror podcast listening to how crazy and absurdly racist he is. Some of the comments in the last segment are absurd. And then the hypocrisy and outrageousness of orban. They just love it. [indiscernible] this is absolutely frightening to be in this country. There are good people that will not be held accountable for whatever they do. Look at january 6. Thanks a lot. That is my comment. And go, democracy. Host the color used the term outrageousness. Does viktor orban thrive on that bombastic approach . Guest he does. We have seen that in our own country. What is troubling is he is clearly a liberal politician. He does not care about democracy. He is clearly racist even though he claims he is not. Here we are in the United States welcoming him to speech at a Major Political conference. It is almost incongruence in many ways. Host diane in detroit, go ahead. Caller good morning. First time caller. I wanted to say it was disgraceful, horrified. Everyone that cheered him on, i am scared for democracy. Thank you. Host david salvo. Guest we should be worried about the state of democracy in the United States. We have seen since 2020 and the insurrection of january 6 and organic Movement Call into question one of the pillars of democrat life. And the fact a sitting president raised doubts about the veracity of our election to hold onto power is an autocratic move. Now there is a groundswell of disinformation where candidates for office in the coming midterms are laying the groundwork to call into question the results of the election that has not happened yet. Host you touched on this earlier in terms of the elections in hungary and the manipulation that happened there in voting districts. Tell us more about that. Guest the party in power legally changed laws to advantage their party. I think what you see in the United States is politicians trying to politicize the electoral process, trying to change voting laws to make it more difficult to send in mailin ballots which has always been a pillar of the electoral process in the United States. Now you have a party or candidates trying to change that because they know it is advantageous to them holding onto power. That is similar to what happens in countries like hungary that are not democratic. Host many supporters of viktor orban will say things like he is a very profamily prime minister. The government will support having more children in hungary. What is behind that effort in hungary . Guest there is a movement in hungary to promote heteronormative gender stereotypes, marriage is defined in the constitution between a man and woman. It is a profamily values country. I think that has support among most parts of the hungarian population. We have that debate in the United States. There is nothing wrong with that on the surface. We can have that debate. The problem is when you manipulate laws or the media environment so there are no opposition voices able to be heard made that is a problem. Host lets hear from bakersfield, california, james, on the republican line. Good morning. Caller i wanted to ask mr. Salvo to go into more detail about how democracy is not being fairly implemented in hungary. I was thinking they were more of a democratic country. You are making the claim elections are not free and fair. Is your organization does your organization generally lean left or right . What is your opinion of george soros . Thank you. Host mr. Orban critical of george soros and his speech last night, as he has been in the past. Guest my organization started as a bipartisan organization. Our original directors were unknown and open democrat and republican. We still have democrats and republicans in our staff working together. We are now a nonpartisan organization. We are established to protect democracy. We do not care so much about party affiliation. The reason i say hungary has moved from being a democratic country to an autocratic country is lets look at what the government has done to the media environment. They have created a National Media council that can levee fines against media organizations willynilly on the whims of the government. The government has used this to impose economic pressure on opposition media outlets. On top of that, the government has threatened advertisers to pull their ads from perceived hostile opposition media. That has crippled and bankrupted many needy outlets in hungary. Now you have a media landscape dominated by loyalists to viktor orban. That is using the power of the state to essentially entrench your hold on power. I do not see that as democratic. It may be manipulating democratic procedures but it is not democrat. Democratic. Host it sounds similar to what is going on in russia. Guest it is. Orban takes a lot of his cues from putin and other autocrats. He cozies up to china. It is strange the marriage between parts of the american right and viktor orban when orban has been so close to china over the years. Obviously, china is anathema to that segment. Host is there an economic connection . Guest there is an economic connection. It is not unique to hungary. All over the world, china is using leverage to buy support in countries like hungary. Host julie on the republican line. Caller good morning. I have to say that the caller before me ask the question i wanted to ask. My point right now is this. Why is it not ok to be conservative . Why is it not ok to think a man and woman should be able to create a child . Why is it ok for this countrys catholics to think abortion should be in the law forever . Codify it, codify it. Why is it long for we to have our opinion, and the left, their opinion whether wrong or right, it is what it is. Who cares what we think . The other part i wanted to mention was that our president wants to codify abortion. He is supposedly a catholic. No matter how you look at this, ok, abortion is death. Host we talked about abortion in the previous segment. If you wanted to respond to some of her other comments. Guest i dont think it is a problem to be conservative. We should have debates about abortion laws and marriage. That is democratic society. We have a marketplace of ideas. We debate them. We go to the polls. We elect candidates. Sometimes our ideas win. Sometimes they lose. The pendulum swings. It is not a winner take all system. That is the beauty of democracy. Sometimes our candidates and issues prevail, and sometimes they dont. It will change over time. But if you monopolize a system so that only your views are heard and only your candidates hold onto power, it is no longer democracy. There are leftwing autocrats just as there are right wing autocrats. It is not unique to where you fall on the political spectrum. Host lets hear more from the speech yesterday by viktor orban at cpac in dallas. Here he is critical of u. S. Democrats over his style of government. [video clip] they wanted to force us to change our constitution according to the globalist liberal contract. How bizarre. This came as a surprise and caused us a lot of pain. But we resisted this attempt successfully. Since then, we are not the favorite of american democrats. They did not want me to be here. They made every effort to drive a wedge between us. They hate me and slander me and my country, as they hate you and slander you and the america that you stand for. We all know how this works. Progressive liberals did not want me to be here because they knew what i would tell you. Because i am here to tell you that we should unite our forces because we hungarians know [applause] because we hungarians know how to defeat the enemies of freedom on the political battlefield. Host david salvo, framing it as a battlefield, and a similar headline from the hill. We must cordon eight a movement of our troops to fight liberal order coordinate a movement of our troops to fight liberal order. Guest is what we are seeing across the transatlantic space for far right movements in many countries are trying to learn from one another. That itself is not a problem. That happens in mainstream centrist politics. Countries learn from one another. I think this notion that we must band together to fight, a call to arms against the established order, that is problematic. I think it is indicative of orbans authoritarian bent. He does not want to work within the established rules of the game. He wants to mold them to suit his own end. Host is there a militant or paramilitary right wing presence in hungary . Guest i think in many parts of europe, you have an extreme fringe that trends towards that sort of violent extremism. I do not know the exact situation in hungary. I do know in other parts of europe, you have seen those types of extremists come together. Host what sort of changes have happened to the hungarian constitution under viktor orban . Has it been totally rewritten . Guest it was totally rewritten. It was rewritten after his party won election was able to stack the parliament to have a super majority to write it without much input from other parts of the hungarian political system. Host lets hear from randy in alabama on the democrats line. Caller their newspeople over there sound like american newspeople. There aint much difference. Best thing they can do is split the country and have two United States. That will settle a lot of it. Thank you. Host how much has changed in hungary since the fall of the soviet union . Guest it has become a more economically viable country. It originally oriented itself towards the west. Enjoined European Union and nato. This was inconceivable before the fall of the soviet union. Its population seemed to buy into western norms, western political ideals. That is changing. Hungary by joining the European Union agreed to a certain set of norms to protect rights for all of its citizens. Now it is saying we want some benefits of being in the e. U. We want the economic benefits but we do not want to comport to other demands. Host what can the e. U. Do in response . Guest it is tough. The e. U. Does not want to completely alienate hungary. Does not want to alienate orban. That is dangerous. Brussels is trying to figure out how to navigate this. Host do you know if hungarys lending support to the nato effort . Guest yes, of course. Hungary as a nato member is absolutely an important part. We should note that it is an ally of the United States. It does work with our military on nato missions. It is not like this is china we are talking about. Host what has been different about the immigrant policy in the case of the ukrainian refugees because of the war . Guest hungary has an antimigration stance. We see most of the migrants from ukraine being funneled toward poland. There, too, you have a backlash in certain parts of Polar Society polish society against the influx of migrants. They historically had close ties. Nevertheless, it is inflaming tensions there, too. Host next is john from dayton, ohio, on the republican line. Caller actually, i am on the independent line. However, thank you to mr. Salvo for the education i am receiving by watching. As i have watched through the covid and our political struggles we have had over the past five or six years, i see a move toward minority rule. You have a group of people who want to restrict voting. You have a group of people that have decided they know best for the whole country and they will make choices for everyone. Viktor orban seems to be of that same ilk. That is the reason he is here talking to the cpac. I find it rather disturbing that his group would turn to a former eastern bloc country that is two tottering on the fence between supporting putin two tottering on the fence between supporting putin and democracy. He is also still, he still wants to minority rule in that country. And he sees it as viable for this country, which it is not. Host thanks for that. David salvo, your thoughts . Guest i think there is a big reason why you see this sector of american conservatives courting him and how he has been able to manipulate laws to entrench his party rule. This segment of the american conservative electorate understands it is in the minority. It does not have a groundswell of organic popular support. If it could learn how to manipulate democracy to serve its own ends, they ought to learn from the masters of that. Or bond is one of them viktor orban is one of them. Host a headline. Embrace for viktor orban deepens among conservatives. Fresno, california, mark, on the independent line. Caller the caller said the gentleman made racist comments. Everything cannot be racist when you throw that out there for true racism. I will not say a cuss word on the air. But that is kind of his beliefs. As far as being neutral, he said he was neutral. Obviously, he is not neutral. [indiscernible] thank you. Host david, i think you said your organization, foundation for defensive democracy, is a bipartisan organization. Guest if we are going to use the militant word, the fight to protect our democracy, this call to action to protect democracy cannot just be one party or group of americans. It has to be united across the aisles to strengthen our democratic elections, to sanitize our political discourse. I dont mean censorship. I just need to have normal civil conversations about issues like abortion in ways that do not inflame passions. We need to be able to talk to each other and understand our democratic life depends on the pendulum swinging. Sometimes our ideas and candidates win. Sometimes they lose. That is ok. That is going to happen in democracies. Host is orbans party in hungary the Minority Party . Guest it is not the Minority Party. It is overwhelmingly in parliament the majority party. Host a few more calls. We will go to illinois, rose on the republican line. Good morning. Caller good morning. You can. Of the people all of the time but not all of the people all of the time. When i listened to this man talk, i knew right away he was a leftist liberal. I am tired of calling us a democracy when we are a republic. We are talking about the news in hungary and how it is by these controlled people, freaks or whatever they are. I dont know. I forgot the name he used. But anyway, in america, we have the left controlling our news media. The computers. They are all billionaires that only computernbc, abc. When you listen to one channel, they all mimic the other channels. They are within the democratic party. They are all democrats. They buy off policymakers. They buy off congressman. They buy off the bureaucrats running the different departments. Host we are running short on time. David, she is critical of the news media. So to is victor ormonde. Guest we could have a debate about the immediate environment in the United States. I dont think it is perfect. I think the media inflames those divides that have engulfed political discourse. I think there are many channels on all parts of the spectrum that are culpable for that. Host sherry, good morning. Caller good morning. I would like to say thank you so much the cspan and thank you to david and for his organization. As someone that the democrat in a red state i find a little bit of hope in the voting yesterday showed there are a lot more democrats coming out to vote. I want to say gerrymandering aspect of it is definitely taking a hold. They explained they changed the rules and changed one little area, the district, to a republican against anything remotely democratic. I want to say thank you to all of you. I hear this at my job. People having another war. The north and the south. I cry every day. I have three grandsons and two granddaughters and a 15yearold daughter. It is very scary. I want to say thank you to you all for everything you do and for getting it out there. Host we will go to marshall from virginia. Democrats line. Caller good morning. I listened to mr. Ormonde speak yesterday and i was concerned. Im an american first. Most americans should be americans first. Hearing the things he said. They want less crossdressers and more chuck norris, pulling on those american sentiment. They were saying things about gender identity. After hungarian women have their fourth child, they get a tax break. Go marriott hungarian woman. Go marry a hungarian woman. He wants the court the donald trump fan base because hes at cpac. Donald trump is a criminal. If we are talking about upholding the laws of the United States, the full weight of the law for someone who tries to overthrow the government should be applied. I dont know why we are even making victor ormonde relevant. He does not emulate american ideals. We are a country of a multitude of people. Guest i agree. We should not be emulating him in this country. We our country of a multitude of people. We have different ethnic identities, different backgrounds. We are all immigrants from some part of the world. We have different views on family values. That is good. That is what has made america such a vibrant democracy for the last two plus centuries. We should be working to protect that. We are not going to agree on questions like crossdressers. That is ok. We need to have that debate. We need to protect rights for all american citizens regardless of how they express themselves. Victor ormonde tells us its ok to to do that. Host we appreciate you coming in for the conversation this morning. Cspans washington journal, everyday we are taking your calls alive, on the air on the news of the day, and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. Coming up saturday morning, the Washington Times discusses his podcast, history has it happens and the political stories of today. Each have podcasts on the placard black podcast. Watch washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern, saturday morning on cspan or on cspan now, our free mobile video app, join the discussion with your phone call, facebook comments, Text Messages and tweets. Cspan will have more live coverage from cpac tonight. Steve bannon who served as a former advisor trump will headline a dinner at the conservative Political Action conference in dallas at 8 30 p. M. Eastern h