Report: White House And State Dept Officials Sought to Block Trump-Orban Meeting Over Fears They'd 'Get Along'

White House and State Department officials had sought to block an Orban visit since the start of Trump’s presidency [...]

“Basically, everyone agreed — no Orban meeting,” said a former White House official involved in internal discussions. “We were against it because [we] knew there was a good chance that Trump and Orban would bond and get along.”

The effort to keep distance between Trump and Orban began to fray earlier this year with the departures of senior officials and the emergence of new voices around the president. Among the most important was Mulvaney, who became acting chief of staff in January and was seen as sympathetic to Orban’s hard-right views and skepticism of European institutions. In Congress, Mulvaney’s former Freedom Caucus colleagues last year backed Orban’s efforts to kill a small U.S. grant designed to nurture independent media outlets in Hungary.

Mulvaney’s involvement in approving the Orban visit was one of several instances in which he overruled national security officials, officials said. At the same time, Mulvaney also facilitated an arrangement in which Trump directed other diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, to work with Giuliani on his Ukraine agenda.