After President Donald Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, threw a fit at a reporter during a diplomatic lunch for asking her about what the administration is doing to address cost-of-living issues, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was visibly impressed, even joking that he needed to hire her for his own administration.
"He signed the largest middle-class tax cut in six months, in six months, in record time," Leavitt said, referring to Trump's megabill that predominantly extended tax cuts for the top 1 percent while giving families making under $50,000 less than a dollar a day in tax cuts on average. "Affordability is what the American people elected this president to do, and he is doing it, and you guys refuse to cover it, and you refuse to cover that the previous administration created the worst unaffordability crisis in American history!"
Despite Leavitt's claims, inflation has accelerated in recent months after it had largely come down in the final year of former President Joe Biden's term, driven by energy prices and Trump's imposition of broad-based tariffs on imports from around the world.
Orban, however, went on to say that he wanted to hire her away from Trump after seeing how she handled the press, saying, "Can I get her some months?"
"Sure," Trump said, eliciting laughs.
“Karoline - the prime minister would like you to work for him in Hungary," said Trump. "You know what? That's a very good decision. Please don't leave us, Karoline!”
The Hungarian prime minister, a far-right leader who has a close relationship with Trump, has become infamous for eroding electoral and press freedoms in his country, and some observers have suggested Orban has transformed Hungary into a dictatorship.
Experts have also raised alarms that Trump has moved to push the same strategies Orban used to subjugate his country in the United States, including redrawing electoral maps to give his own party extra seats, and pushing for critical media outlets to be bought up and run by companies and executives favorable to him.