For the second year in a row, President Biden has snubbed Hungary, excluding them from his “Summit for Democracy,” which has a guest list of 120 countries.
In October 2020, one month before the presidential election, Biden called the conservative, anti-woke Hungarian government led by Viktor Orban “totalitarian,” declaring, “You see what’s happening from Belarus through Poland and Hungary and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world.” Neither Poland nor Hungary recognize gay marriage and they both have laws restricting gay adoption.
"You see what's happening in everything from Belarus to Poland to Hungary and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world and this president embraces all the thugs in the world," said @JoeBiden at his town hall event last night pic.twitter.com/Ix8R8bhQNc
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) October 16, 2020
Roughly two weeks ago, Hungary’s justice minister, Judit Varga said the Orban government would fight in the Court of Justice of the EU to defend an education law that was passed in 2021; it banned the use of materials promoting homosexuality and gender change at schools.
In August 2022, Orban told CPAC, “We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels. … To sum up, the mother is a woman. The father is a man, and leave our kids alone, full stop, end of discussion.”
Zoltan Koskovics of the Budapest Center for Fundamental Rights told The Heritage Foundation, “The woke sect that has taken over the Democratic Party does not like the pro-Western stance of our government. We need a strong America in a dangerous international situation. But not a woke America.”
In July 2022, the Hungarian government confirmed the Biden administration’s termination of the 1979 income tax treaty with the United States. It would cease to have effect starting in January 2024. The Biden administration reportedly terminated the treaty because Orban’s government opposed the EU Directive, which wanted to force a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%. The Biden Treasury Department wrote it terminated the treaty because of Hungary’s “Avoidance of Double Taxation and the Prevention of Fiscal Evasion with Respect to Taxes on Income.”
In October 2022, Péter Márki-Zay, Orbán’s biggest opponent, admitted that his Hungary for All Movement (MMM) had received millions of euros from the United States during his election campaign, funds reportedly transferred to his movement via an American foundation called Action for Democracy. He admitted his movement used the funds to pay for campaign bills.
Action for Democracy had reportedly named Italy, Brazil, Hungary, and Poland, all led by conservative governments at the time, as targets of their movement.