Orbán on USAID: The world owes a debt to Donald Trump for putting an end to this dark conspiracy

On Wednesday evening, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also gave his thoughts on the Trump administration shutting down America's biggest government aid agency, USAID. In his opinion, everyone owes a debt of gratitude to US President Donald Trump for the move, which cut the agency's budget and is planning on merging it with the state department.

Orbán said the organisation, which will have to send almost all of its staff on leave on Friday, had not only funded the "ultra-progressive Politico" during the previous US administration, but also "basically the entire Hungarian left-wing media". "And they called me the disruptor of the year...", the Prime Minister added, saying that the whole world owes a debt of gratitude to Trump for uncovering and putting an end to this "dark conspiracy".

The Prime Minister was presumably referencing the theory circulating on the internet in recent days, which claims that USAID has been funding Politico and AP News with millions of dollars for years. In reality, what happened was that the US federal agencies had provided a subscription for their employees to these publications covering politics, considered authoritative in the US as well, because their analyses were necessary for their work. In other words, the US state apparatus was not providing a subsidy, it was paying for a service – which amounted to $8.2 million last year for Politico Pro.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, did not bother with the details on Wednesday, she simply repeated the theory of conservative opinion leader Kyle Becker that USAID was spending taxpayers' money to support Politico. As she said, this is now over, they are cancelling the "subsidy disguised as a subscription", and added that Elon Musk's pseudo-ministry DOGE is already working on it.

USAID was set up in 1961 and is the world's largest public donor agency, implementing international development and humanitarian aid programmes across the globe, disbursing more than 40 percent of all humanitarian aid alongside Washington. The organisation of course also existed during Donald Trump's first term from 2016 to 2020, but at the time the president did not feel the need to end this “dark conspiracy”.

Orbán's comment about him being called a "disruptor" was clearly directed at Politico, which has long listed the people who have had the greatest impact on Europe, and in recent years has had such a category. But Orbán has never been "disruptor of the year": he came in third last year, was second behind Giorgia Meloni two years ago, and in 2022 he was only fifth. The Hungarian Prime Minister was number one on Politico's list in 2016, but there were no specific categories at the time.