Hungarian Conservative

In the first 24 hours after the historic guilty verdict, President Trump’s campaign raised a whopping $52.8 million, according to the announcement of the campaign itself. If this is true, that would be a shattering new record, beating out the $26 million the Biden camp raised in one day in August 2020, after they announced that Kamala Harris would be their Vice Presidential nominee, the first black female candidate on a presidential ticket.

Defence Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky announced the purchase of two new German Leopard 2A7HU tanks on his Facebook page. The vehicles will be added to the fleet of the 1st György Klapka Armoured Brigade of the Hungarian Defence Forces.

The Polish History Museum in Warsaw, Poland, the venue for the 12th European Remembrance Symposium last month, has an impressive array of items on display, ranging from 17th-century sunken treasure recovered from the Vistula River to items related to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, such as a ball with which the Polish National Team scored against Russia at Euro 2012.

Spencer Chretien was the guest of honour at the Center for Fundamental Rights’ latest event, where he talked about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, aiming to help an incoming new Trump administration. Mr Chetien also spoke about his time in the first Trump administration, President Trump’s trial in Manhattan, and the problems with the liberal bureaucracy in Washington, DC.

In what was a highly controversial process from the very beginning, a Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on all felony counts. Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán expressed his continued support of the former President on social media, highlighting that ultimately it would be the American people to ‘make their verdict this November’.

‘It does have some positive effect to see political opponents act so civilly with each other. However, it also subtracted from the entertainment value of the debate; and the performances were less persuasive as well, less likely to have enough impact to change somebody’s vote.’

For reasons unknown, the Facebook page of the Hungarian pro-Israel news website Neokohn.hu was banned by Meta on Sunday. EMIH Chief Rabbi Slomó Köves’ page was also removed. Both pages have since been restored, but the incidents are quite troubling, considering the that the bans appear to have had no basis whatsoever.

Ferenc Kovács, the owner of Aurora Hotel and a crypto enthusiast, announced in a Twitter video that his establishment will be accepting payments in Bitcoin. The video was picked up by multiple major crypto-themed accounts on the social media site.

According to a survey by the MCC Youth Research Institute, 53 per cent of Hungarians aged 15–29 have used ChatGPT or other similar AI tools in the past. A vast majority of them find the new technology useful, with 23 per cent being of the opinion that it is very useful, and 66 per cent that it is rather useful.

Day 2 of the Rule of Law as Lawfare Conference featured speeches by István Stumpf, a former justice on the Constitutional Court of Hungary, Aleksander Stępkowski, Supreme Court of Poland justice, and Dr Reinhard Merkel, law professor at Universität Hamburg.

Antal Horger famously vowed to never let Attila József, one of the most influential Hungarian poets of the 20th century, get his teaching certificate while teaching at the University of Szeged. For this decision, József went on to immortalize him as the cold-hearted, vindictive ‘overlord’ of the university in his 1937 poem Születésnapomra (For My Birthday), published just months before his suicide.

Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó of Hungary claimed that Hungary will not back outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s candidacy for NATO Secretary General since he had made comments about ‘bringing Hungary to its knees’ in the past, He also added that ‘if a threat is from the East, then maybe the Secretary General should also be from the East’.

On the first day of the Rule of Law as Lawfare Conference experts such as Minister of European Union Affairs János Bóka of Hungary and MEP Ryszard Legutko of Poland discussed how the legal concept of the rule of law has been turned into a political weapon by EU bodies, and analysed the double standards applied to different Member States with rule of law assessment procedures.

Incumbent conservative judge Andrew Pinson beat his liberal challenger John Barrow by 10 points in an election for a seat on the Supreme Court of Georgia last Friday. That is despite the fact that Barrow made abortion rights the centre message of the campaign, which is perceived as one of the strongest issues for Democrats in the 2024 presidential election.

An ethnic Hungarian woman in Trascaprathia, Ukraine, who asked to remain anonymous, penned an open letter, asking for prayers for the men and their families in Ukraine who are in a state of panic over the new, stricter conscription law.

Distinguished scholars, museum curators, and educators gathered at the Polish History Museum in Warsaw, Poland for the 12th European Remembrance Symposium organized by the ERNS to talk about ways to preserve history, the way to teach national history to the next generation, if there is a common European historical narrative, and what it means to be free in Europe in this day and age.

While talking at the Sedona Forum, US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman called Hungary’s pro-peace approach to the Russo-Ukrainian war ‘a proposal for capitulation’. In response to him, the political director for the Prime Minister of Hungary Balázs Orbán asked: ‘Has the US strategy really been that effective over the past two years?’

Head Coach Marco Rossi has named his 26-player squad for Euro 2024, where his team Hungary will be facing hosts Germany, Switzerland, and Scotland in the group stage.

The North Carolina University’s board of trustees unanimously voted to dismantle their DEI programme, and instead use those funds for added campus police and security needed due to the pro-Palestine protests by students. Similar developments have come out of the state of Florida as well.

The President of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs outlined that while the European economy was sluggish in recent years, Hungary was able to continue to grow its foreign direct investments, in large part thank to its relations with China. The author believes that this approach would be advisable to follow for the whole of the European continent as well.

President Trump is leading President Biden by double digits in Nevada, a state President Biden won by 2.4 points in 2020. The Republican challenger was also shown to have the advantage in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania as well; with the only exception being Michigan, where President Biden leads by a single point.

As part of the Europe Day celebrations, EU Member States opened their embassies to the public last weekend. Hungary’s Embassy in Washington DC was visited by around 3,000 people, who could take part in miscellaneous programmes celebrating Hungarian culture and history.

The Hampton, New Hampshire-based gym company was forced to lower its annual financial forecasts, both for revenue and profit, admittedly due to the March 2024 controversy when a biological man was photographed shaving his face in the women’s local room at one of their locations in Fairbanks, Alaska.

The Hungarian government stated in a mass email sent to citizens that it is not willing to take part in NATO’s reportedly planned mission in Ukraine, which would encompass military training and the coordination of arms shipments.

Jeremy Wayne Tate, founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test, replied to a clip of a press conference shared by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, in which he discusses his state being ranked #1 in education by U.S. News for the second year in a row.

Despite the increasingly hawkish rhetoric from President Emmanual Macron of France, the French Ambassador to Russia did attend President Vladimir Putin’s fifth inauguration. So did Ambassador Konkoly of Hungary, and the envoys of four other EU countries as well.

Hungary and Armenia had severed diplomatic ties with each other in 2012 over an extradition scandal. Relations were re-established in December 2022. Now, the two sides have agreed to open embassies in each other’s capitals. In addition, Wizzair will soon launch a direct flight between Budapest and Yerevan.

Conservative Dutch political commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek’s speech at CPAC Hungary 2024 discussing the demographic changes in Europe was removed for a ‘hate speech’ violation on YouTube. On X, however, the speech remains, garnering over 50 million views in a week.

The Transatlantic Patriot Summit took place on 27 April, co-hosted by the Danube Institute and a number of international conservative youth organizations. The distinguished speakers covered a wide array of topics, including the left’s control over mainstream media in many countries, mass migration, and the upcoming elections in Europe and the United States.

Professor Gottfried sat down for an insightful, two-hour discussion with host Meg Hansen of the Danube Institute, in which they covered topics such as the different branches of American conservatism, the current state of the political right in the United States, and ‘paleoconservatism’, a term coined by Professor Gottfried himself.