Viktor Orbán is fighting for democracy – Tucker Carlson to Mandiner

By Mátyás Kohán and Gergely Szilvay

Although you travelled to Budapest on your own cost and you didn’t ask for a speaking fee, the leftist media is already full of stories about how MCC flew in a right-wing radical on taxpayer funds. What brought you to Hungary?
I’m 52, my father worked for the state department, and he was very involved in the Cold War. From our perspective, Hungary and the rest of Central Europe was liberated from socialism, from Soviet domination, and that was a huge success. And like a lot of Americans, that was kind of the last time I paid attention, in August of 1991. The Soviet Union fell, and we felt like this was a huge victory. But a couple years ago, I noticed that the U.S. government, NGOs, people I knew in Washington, are all attacking Hungary. Why, I asked? Well, because the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is against democracy. Oh, I thought, so he’s like a strongman? So I looked into it, and it turns out that Viktor Orbán was democratically elected in a couple of elections that nobody questioned were free and fair. It also turned out that Viktor Orbán has in fact been a leader in Hungary’s resistance against the Soviets. I concluded there was more to the story than I was hearing… Is Viktor Orbán cheating in the election? No. Viktor Orbán is simply resisting the efforts of a lone billionaire named George Soros to remake his country. He’s actually defending democracy against these totally unaccountable billionaires NGOs and some governments in the West. He’s actually fighting for democracy against forces that would seek to undermine it.

I believe in democracy, in sovereignty and self-determination. As an American, that’s central not just to my understanding of government, but also to my understanding of myself. And I don’t think that NGOs should get to determine how a country should be run. I think the people who live in that country should determine that. If, for example, the population of Mali wanted to put into law ideas that I hate, that’s kind of their business, not mine. I just believe in the precept, in the concept of democracy and self-government. That’s why we’re here, to cover that. 

You’ve mentioned George Soros. In Hungary, the left thinks the Soros issue is made up by Orbán, but it seems the American right is also mad about him. 
Right, and many on the right have been bullied into silence on George Soros, because criticizing some elderly billionaire is bigotry somehow. It’s not! And by the way, it’s not just Soros. Soros is the most famous, but there are all kinds of oligarchs in the United States and internationally who have undue influence over the way supposedly democratic governments are run. In democracies like America, it’s very simple: you elect people to do what you would do if you had the time to run the government. That’s our system. And in the last thirty years, you have seen the rise of an entire class of people who have influence over government simply because they’re rich.

Even if my wife got ten billion dollars and started telling americans what kind of country they should have, I’d say to her: I love you, I agree with you, but that’s not our system. People should govern themselves, that’s the whole promise of democracy. Soros has a particularly destructive and poisonous worldview that seeks to destroy the existing form of government, the bonds that connect people through family.

Lately, American media have been looking into him and have found that he has been systematically supporting liberal district attorney candidates who are championing laxer penalties.
I’ll give you one example. In at least two American cities, George Soros was the largest funder of prosecutors who were running for office. He got them elected. These people then didn’t want to enforce the law. The U.S. is a huge country with almost 350 million people, it’s very complex, and voters aren’t very conscious. They are only paying attention to the presidential race – you’re voting for Trump or you’re voting for Biden. But there are thousands of office holders below the presidential level who really determine how the country is run. And

. If he gives a million dollars in an election, more than anybody else is giving, he can determine the outcome of these elections. In an election for district attorney, if you get someone in there who refuses to enforce the law, who refuses to charge murderers with murder, you get more murders. That has happened in the city of Chicago, it happened in the city of Philadelphia. People died as a result of what George Soros did. Soros, of course, has remarkable influence in American media as well. This is not a conspiracy, it’s human nature: people bow before the rich and powerful. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, has a huge effect on the American political system, and no one in the media will criticize him. The same is true for George Soros. Our role is to tell people what’s actually happening. If we look over to Hungary – George Soros doesn’t live here. There are ten million Hungarians, they should decide how they live. Some guy who lives across the ocean gets to control your government? No! And the American media and outlets like The Guardian called them names. You’re a bigot, you’re a hater, because you don’t want some guy who lives in upstate New York to run your government... Why does that make you a hater? The ostentatiously pro-democracy people are in fact working as hard as they can to undermine democracy and self-government. 

A couple weeks ago, Hungary changed the penalties for pedophilia to more severe, and it banned the dissemination of LMBTQI propaganda among minors. What’s your take on it? 
Parents have a right to determine who talks to their kids about sex. Period. All sex, whether it’s gay sex or straight sex. I don’t want you to talk to my kids about sex, and if you do that, maybe I’ll punch you in the face, because that’s disgusting. If you’re upset because penalties for pedophilia have gotten stronger, that says more about you than about the people who are trying to criminalize pedophilia. They’ve revealed themselves at this point. And again, it’s your country, if that’s what you want, you should have it, because that’s the promise of democracy. You can debate it in Hungary, but why is Brussels getting involved, why are NGOs in New York mad about it? 

Brussels says that the law threatens the basic values of the European Union. 
Right, so

What does that tell you though? It tells you a lot about them. Pedophilia is now a foundational principle in Europe? The right that matters most is the right of parents to parent their children. And if i want to teach my children the moral code that I believe in, that I grew up with, that’s my absolute right, and you can’t interfere because they’re my children. By the way, if the Hungarian parliament wants to pass a law requiring everybody to wear a funny hat on Sundays, that’s up to the Hungarian parliament. It’s not up to the EU, and it’s certainly not up to newspapers in New York City. It’s your country! It’s just so funny that the people who say they’re defending democracy have no problem getting involved in other countries’ internal affairs. They can do that because Hungary is ten million people, it’s a landlocked country in Central Europe, so they can boss you around. And I hate that.

Your Fox News show gets millions of views each day. What is the key to success? How does conservative journalism gain traction? 
Well, I never even think of myself as particularly conservative. I am, I guess, compared to everybody else in the media. But i’m not very ideological, i’m not trying to push my theories on anybody. My basic principles are pretty simple:

I believe in the freedom of conscience. I don’t have very complicated views on anything, I really don’t. I think you should say what you think, not be embarrassed, and try, as best you can, explain why you think it. To speak clearly, and be honest. It’s not hard. And the only reason that we’re popular in the United States is that so few other TV shows are doing that. They’re liars, and everybody knows they’re liars. They get up, they read from the cards what they’re supposed to say. In the middle of this crisis, a lot of people have decided that they aren’t going to say what they think, that they are going to join the mob calling for people who say what they think to be silenced. I’m lucky to work for people who let us really say what we think. And because there aren’t many options, this is why we became so popular. But I don’t think there is anything magical, anything impressive, other than being honest when everybody else is forced to lie. 

Would you call the Biden government a regime? 
What is a regime? He was democratically elected. The election wasn’t fair, but it was an election, and I’m not claiming that Biden is not really the president. The Democratic Party, the American media, big corporations and the universities, every power center is Democratic, they are left-wing. They live in a one party state. And this elite runs the country badly.

You wrote about this in your book, Ship of Fools. 
Yes. And that’s why Donald Trump became president. Trump is not a genius, and he did many ridiculous things, but he was a democratically elected president – against the wishes of all those power centers I mentioned. They didn’t ask themselves why Americans voted for Trump. They just decided that Trump voters are bad people – and racists. And of course Russians helped him to win the election. I’m here in Hungary, which was literally invaded by the Russians, and still people seem to be less paranoid about Russia than in New York, although you were forced to learn Russian here… American Russophobes do not know anything about Russia, they do not know anything about the rest of the world, and they don’t care. They’re using a spectre to defend the ghost of the Russian espionage to cover their own crimes! As long as you haven’t asked the question about why Trump was elected, you shouldn’t move forward! If something unexpected happens in life, you should figure out why it happened, before you go do anything else. If I wake up a morning and my kid comes downstairs and says ’Dad, I hate you’, I wouldn’t say ’you are a bad person, go away’. I would ask my wife what the problem could be. But the political elite hasn’t done it because they couldn’t handle it. And the reason was that tens of millions of Americans were mad at their leaders because the leadership did a very bad job. There is no mystery about it. The American political elite has gotten too mediocre, too stupid to face the truth about themselves. And they turned against their own populations, and it’s not really healthy when this happens. The leadership of the country simply hates Americans. Just imagine a family where the father hates the kids! 

Do you think Donald Trump will run again in 2024? 
I don’t know. My instinct is no, and I dont’t think he loved it in the first place. He is old, although Joe Biden is older. 

Ron DeSantis is said to be one of the potential GOP presidential candidates.
You know which the well-run states in America are because people move there. And people are leaving states run by a very specific kind of George Soros-backed leaders, because their life is worse. In those states run by Democrats there is more crime, more filth, more people on the streets, taxes are higher. One prolific example is Gavin Newsom of California. And a lot of people are moving the DeSantis’ Florida. He is not the only reason they are moving there, but him running the state well is one of the main reasons. It could be the basis of his presidential campaign. 

Are you thinking about running? 
No! I’m a journalist, those are not my skills! I’m good at talking, reading, watching and assessing. If you need somebody to tell you why you’re doing a bad job, I’m pretty good at that – I wrote books about that. 

Will the American right be able to win again in 2024 and beyond? 
I don’t know. The Republican Party is out of energy, and it’s unable to defend its own voters. On January 6th, there was this demonstration at the Capitol, and hundreds of frustrated Trump voters walked into the U.S. Capitol. Hundreds of them are still in jail today. If they committed a crime, they should be punished, but the punishment they received is so disproportionate that effectively they were punished for political reasons. So except some of its politicans the, Republican Party is useless. In the summer of 202, the Democratic Party used its mobs of voters, for example the mobs of BLM, to burn cities and murder people, and nobody was punished at all. Republicans are collaborating with the power structures stealing Americans their sovereignty and basic civil liberties. If you do not defend your voters, they will become radical. I’m against radicalism. I don’t like violence and I don’t like crazy ideological movements. My views are very simple: have a job, get married, have kids and raise them, try to be better and better.

Cover photo by Árpád Földházi