The Wall Street Journal on Sunday said the Trump administration appears to want former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to replace António Guterres as U.N. secretary-general when the latter’s term ends on Dec. 31.
Sources from three countries told the newspaper that the U.S. has urged Orbán to join the race. The Trump administration has reportedly discussed his potential candidacy with Moscow and Beijing who appear supportive of a plan that would have Orbán stand as a U.S.-Russia-China joint candidate.
“As U.S. officials discussed who they would want to see atop the U.N., Mr. Orbán’s name kept coming up. ‘Someone like Orbán,’ they would say, and Chinese and Russian counterparts would agree. Eventually U.S. officials asked themselves the question: Why not Mr. Orbán?” the Journal’s conservative editorial board wrote. “There are plenty of reasons, such as that he would act as an apologist for Vladimir Putin and other dictators.”
The board was highly critical of Guterres as it went on to assess a potential Orbán U.N. leadership post.
“Maybe the best to say about the Orbán idea is that it would lift the veil by giving the U.N. a leader as low as Turtle Bay has already sunk,” it wrote.
Read the full editorial at The Wall Street Journal: