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Donald Trump is set to have another controversial guest at his Mar-a-Lago golf club, and a columnist says it should concern us all.
The former president has previously hosted Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye, as well as a White Nationalist. Now, his plan to bring in Christian nationalist authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is another step in this troubling pattern, according to MSNBC analyst Ja'han Jones.
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"I’m surprised that their little playdate isn’t raising more eyebrows," Jones wrote on Sunday.
He then continued:
"In Orbán, Trump will be meeting with a leader who has proclaimed that Hungarians 'are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race.' Echoing Trump’s immigration rhetoric, including that migrants are 'poisoning the blood' of the U.S., Orbán has said that countries where races are mixed are 'no longer nations.'"
That's not the only reason Jones considers this planned meeting "worrisome."
"The Supreme Court’s decision to take up Trump’s immunity claim, which could imperil the chances of his federal election interference trial beginning before November, arguably gave Trump a potential pathway to impose on the U.S. the very kind of anti-democratic rule that Orbán has instituted in Hungary," he added.
According to Jones, the issue was raised recently by MSNBC host Joy Reid.
"What the Supreme Court is doing is incentivizing Trump to become like the strongmen he has long admired and remain president for life, the idea being that he is untouchable as long as he is the president," Reid said, according to Jones.
"Joy wondered aloud whether Trump will be asking Orbán for tips at Mar-a-Lago. After all, the Hungarian leader, who has been in power since 2010, has entrenched his rule in ways that seem eerily similar to tactics deployed here by Republicans."