Orban’s aide welcomes de-funding of US-sponsored news outlet
The White House move to shut down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in Hungary marks the return to “sober, ally-based” cooperation between Washington and Budapest, a senior political adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
On Wednesday, the acting CEO of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kari Lake, informed Congress that the body is “terminating and no longer funding” the Hungarian branch of RFE/RL, known as Szabad Europa.
According to Lake, the outlet’s “programming has undermined [US] President [Donald] Trump’s foreign policy by opposing the duly elected prime minister, Viktor Orban.” The USAGM will be “ending the use of US taxpayer money” for distribution of content targeting the populations of Washington’s allies in NATO countries, and instead focusing its resources on other regions.
Balazs Orban, a senior adviser to the Hungarian prime minister (who isn’t related to him despite their shared surname), wrote on X on Friday that Szabad Europa had become “an ideologically driven platform promoting liberal activism, including LGBTQ and gender campaigns, across Central and Eastern Europe.”
“Under the Biden administration, this shift deepened further, as the service increasingly engaged in politically motivated narratives aimed at undermining Hungary’s democratically elected government,” he added.
By terminating the outlet, the Trump administration has proven that it wants to build ties with Hungary based on “mutual respect and balanced partnership,” the aide stressed.
RFE/RL was a key tool for spreading Western propaganda in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War and was funded by the CIA. It currently receives money from the US Agency for Global Media.
In March, Trump signed an executive order eliminating most of the funding for USAGM, which, he claimed, had been crawling with “spies and terrorist sympathizers.” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Kapus called the president's move “a huge gift to America's enemies.”
Viktor Orban, who held talks with Trump at the White House on Friday, praised the US president and insisted that the “golden age between the US and Hungary” will begin under him. “I like and respect him,” Trump said about the Hungarian leader.
Orban said after the meeting that he had secured a one-year exemption for Hungary from Washington’s recent sanctions on Russian oil firms.
