Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said former President Trump’s recent meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán shows he “wants to be a dictator.”
“I think you’re looking at a second Donald Trump term … in terms of, he wants to be strong, that he can be tough with his own people … not be good to our allies, not be good to our people and not to, you know, defend people like in Ukraine. He wants to be a dictator,” Grisham said in an interview on CNN.
President Biden went after Trump for his meeting with the Eastern European leader at a campaign event in Pennsylvania.
“You know who he’s meeting with today down at Mar-a-Lago?” Biden said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. “Orbán of Hungary, who stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works. He’s looking for dictatorship.”
Grisham also said she has “sat in many bilateral meetings with world leaders” and that Trump “always looked forward to speaking” with figures such as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, leaders who have been criticized for their authoritarian leanings like Orbán.
Orbán went to Trump’s home in Florida and also posted a picture of them together on Facebook.
“Meeting with President Donald Trump. Make America great again, Mr. President!” the photo was captioned.
The former president has often praised Orbán, and he has become an important figure among the American right.
“There is a great man, a great leader in Europe — Viktor Orbán,” Trump said at a January rally. “He is the Prime Minister of Hungary. He is a very great leader, a very strong man. Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong.”