Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) bashed Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s meeting with Hungary’s power-grabbing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a speech marking the 234th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution at Brigham Young University.
The senator didn’t called out Carlson by name in his speech Friday, but instead referred to him as a “prominent TV pundit” who “traveled to Hungary to extol” Hungary’s hard-right prime minister “as a model for us to emulate.”
Carlson broadcast from Hungary last month while he was visiting the capital of Budapest, where he spoke at a right-wing conference. During an interview with Orbán, Carlson praised his leadership.
“Orbán censors the media in his country, ignores the will of the people in elections, amasses wealth for himself and his cronies,” Romney pointed out. “Hungary is ranked as one of the least free, least democratic, countries in the developed world. Hungary? A model for America?” asked the incredulous senator.
Romney brought up the Carlson-Orbán connection as he warned his audience that democracy is at risk in America. He also slammed the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he said “followed from” then President Donald Trump’s repeated lies that he won the 2020 election.
“Our resolve to follow the Constitution’s path, avoiding the perils of authoritarianism … is wavering,” he said. “No more stunning evidence of that was the attempt to prevent the lawful and constitutional transfer of power on January 6.”
It “followed from” Trump “claiming that the election had been stolen from him. His purported evidence spun from pillar to post, from counterfeit ballots imported from China, to stuffed ballot boxes, to dead voters, to voting machines manipulated from some far off place,” Romney added.
Romney was one of only seven GOP senators who voted to impeach Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot because, he said in a statement, Trump “incited the insurrection against Congress” by urging his followers to march on the Capitol “despite the obvious and well known threats of violence that day.”
Check Romney’s full speech in the video clip up top. He refers to threats to democracy in the U.S. and then Carlson beginning at 13:19
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