PM Orbán about the US-EU trade deal: Trump ate Ursula von der Leyen for breakfast

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said “the earliest possible date should be expected concerning next year’s election” in the Fight Hour online programme on Monday.

Earliest possible date

Under the constitution, the elections should be held in April or May “in line with a decision by the president of the republic”, Orban said, adding that “nobody can strip the president of that right or restrict that right but we must also make preparations.”

Political parties are getting ready “to be in full armour by the earliest date” Orban said. He said that next year offers the second weekend of April as the earliest date, but suggested that the president would make the final decision.

Meanwhile, Orbán said his Fidesz party had selected the election candidates for all 106 constituencies with the exception of 3 or 4.

• Orbán’s Tusványos speech full of omissions, distortions, errors – read what the critics said

The broadcast dubbed Fight Hour has been launched on Orbán’s proposal, and its goal is to stop “the spreading of fake news as early as possible” and to discuss important current issues.

EU-US trade deal

Commenting the EU-US trade deal he said that based on the information available so far, it was not an agreement but US President Donald Trump had “eaten the European Commission President Ursula von del Leyen for breakfast”.

Orbán said that he had expected this outcome in advance, considering that the US President was “heavy weight” as against the EC President being “light weight”. The US President’s position was much more confident while the EC President’s position was always more fragile, he added.

The US has recently struck a similar deal with the UK which was “much better than this”, Orbán said. He added since the European deal was “much worse” than the UK deal, it would be difficult to present it in the future as a success.

• PM Orbán at Tusványos: We would secure landslide victory in a snap election

Who will invest EUR billions in the USA?

Orbán said the problem was that in line with the agreement, Europeans would invest several hundred million euros in the US. “But who will?”, Orbán asked, adding that the EC had no capital to invest. “In whose name did she agree? Will the German Chancellor take the money there, the French President, or the Hungarian PM will send the capital?”, he asked.

He said that “we are supposedly going to buy weapons, to a value of several hundred billion euros”. “But who will? The Commission has no army,” Orbán added.

Orbán said their positions had not been equally firm, the EC president had been in a difficult position.

Orbán continues to fight

He said the Fight Club already had 30,000 members, and 40,000 people had joined the digital civic circles.

He added previously, for 15-20 years, it used to be a “normal civic political practice” that they had “not reacted to blatant lies in order not to amplify the voice of falsehood”. “However, since the digital world has overtaken politics, people are willing to give credit to the the most absurd things, so unless an immediate reaction is given, lies will overtake the internet,” Orbán said.

The internet was a ‘hostile space for a non-liberal, non-leftist’, which he said called for the establishment of digital civic circles.

Orbán said cyberspace was “a crucial part of life” which “we must enter, and I call it a digital conquest of the homeland.” “Civic, patriotic, peaceful … well-wishing people must also have room in that space and it is important that they can protect themselves against the internet aggression,” Orbán said.

Digital civic circles

According to the prime minister, over 600 people have volunteered to organise digital civic circles, including one in Budapest that would redesign the city because “the capital is stuck in petty disputes and it has no large-scale plans.” He said the civic circles would attract “patriotic people for whom the homeland is crucial, who want to develop rather than demolish, and will work for the homeland’s future.”

Concerning his recent journey to the Bálványos Summer University in central Romania, Orbán said he had used an aircraft of the Hungarian military because it was an official visit. He added that he always used scheduled flights for private purposes, even no-frills services, when needed.