Politics- Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spoke at CPAC Budapest on Friday.
- He praised
Tucker Carlson 'sFox News show, and said the GOP should create its own media.
Hungary's authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, heaped praise on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest.
In the speech on Friday, Orbán laid out a 12-point blueprint for how conservatives in the US could build and maintain power. One recommendation was that the GOP build its own media networks.
In Hungary, Orbán has quashed independent media, with the government or Orbán's allies taking control of key broadcast and print media outlets and silencing unflattering coverage.
"Of course, the GOP has its associated media, but they do not compete with the dominance of the liberal press. Only friend Tucker Carlson places himself on the line without wavering," said Orbán in the speech.
"His program is the most watched," Orbán added. "What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7."
Carlson, Fox News' top-rated host, has long praised Orbán on his show, and in a documentary earlier in the year portrayed Orban's Hungary as an idyll of pro-family policies where migration had been banished.
He skirted over Orbán's erosion of the independent media and judiciary, and echoed his promotion of hardline anti-migrant rhetoric, and conspiracy theories about the Hungarian-American financier George Soros, who is Jewish.
At the Hungary CPAC, Carslon made an appearance by video link, describing Hungary as a "a free and decent and beautiful country that cares about its people, their families and the physical landscape."
Journalists from outlets including the Associated Press and New Yorker were denied accreditation for the event, reported The Guardian.
Orbán won a fourth term in power in April, and the speech said that Hungary had been "completely healed" of control by liberals.
CPAC will also hold a conference in Brazil before returning to the US for its event in Texas in August.