Orbán meets with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after NATO summit

Hungary's prime minister, conservative leader Viktor Orbán, left early Thursday from the NATO summit in Washington, D.C. to meet at Mar-a-Lago with former President Donald Trump.

With this latest meeting, Orbán wraps up a grand tour, which included Moscow, Kiev, Beijing, Washington and Mar-a-Lago, to present his "peace plan" for Ukraine.

The prime minister himself referred on X (formerly Twitter) to the meeting in Mar-a-Lago as one more stop to seek peace.

"Peace mission 5.0 It was an honor to visit President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!" wrote Orbán, who previously publicly endorsed the Republican front-runner's candidacy and said Joe Biden is very likely to lose the election in November.

For now, Trump's campaign confirmed the meeting, but did not give details about the topics discussed.

Media outlets such as Axios emphasized that the meeting between Trump and Orbán highlights the importance of the presidential election for Washington's foreign policy.

According to the media organization, if Trump beats Biden, "a very different set of leaders will have VIP status with the White House."

Among them, Axios mentions not only Orbán, but Argentina's President Javier Milei, a rising political star in the conservative world; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, who is ahead of Justin Trudeau in the polls ahead of the upcoming Canadian election.

Meanwhile, during the annual NATO summit, the differences between Orbán and Biden were further highlighted. In fact, according to Financial Times, the Hungarian leader told a group at a White House formal dinner that leaders who thought Biden could win "were like people on the Titanic playing violins as the ship went down."

Some media source noted that Orbán's role at the NATO summit was indeed awkward, as the Hungarian leader has maintained a friendly stance with Russia throughout the war with Ukraine, a situation that puts him in the crosshairs of other European leaders but also keeps him in a prime position to keep searching for a peaceful transition out of the current war.