The Wall Street Journal said on Sunday that the Trump administration appears to want former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to replace António Guterres as UN secretary general when the latter’s term ends on December 31. Sources from three countries told the newspaper that the United States has urged Orbán to join the race. The Trump administration has reportedly discussed his possible candidacy with Moscow and Beijing, who appear to support a plan that would have Orbán run as a joint candidate between the United States, Russia and China. “As US officials discussed who they would like to see atop the UN, Mr. Orbán’s name kept coming up. ‘Someone like Orbán,’ they said, and their Chinese and Russian counterparts agreed. In the end, US officials asked themselves: Why not Mr. Orbán?” wrote the Journal’s conservative editorial board. “There are many reasons, such as that he would act as an apologist for Vladimir Putin and other dictators.” The board was highly critical of Guterres when it went on to evaluate a possible leadership position for Orbán at the UN. “Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Orbán’s idea is that it would lift the veil by giving the UN a leader as low as Turtle Bay has already fallen,” he wrote. Read the full editorial in The Wall Street Journal:
