A tale of two cities: Budapest and Bucharest

Viktor Orban in Hungary was the most interesting European leader of the last 30 years. He created a national business class to resist the foreign takeover of the economy and to enrich himself, his family, his party and his clients. 

The Western establishment tried hard to undermine him and eventually saw that it could not defeat Mr. Orban by preaching liberalism, a creed he had thoroughly discredited at home. 

Instead, they found their instrument in Peter Magyar, who had been a leading member of Mr Orban's Christian nationalist party Fidesz  and who cleverly maintained the familiar rhetoric while opening the country up to foreign direct investment by multinational companies and American energy interests, especially liquefied natural gas (LNG).

In Romania, the challenge to the West or pseudo-West took the form of a sudden sovereignist, pro-peace surge, epitomised by the unexpected rise of Calin Georgescu. 

The cancelling of the presidential election in which Mr. Georgescu came first in the first round may have been done at the fiat of the Americans or may have been a spontaneous attempt to please the Americans by the notoriously corrupt Constitutional Court court, which is part, of course, of the murky Romanian deep state. I hope it's the latter and suspect it's the former but it makes no difference in practice.  

The subsequent victory of Nicusor Dan and his putting together a centrist coalition cordoned off the right, making sure Romania remains a relatively safe place for multinationals, if they know how to lobby effectively which they certainly do. 

When Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan refused to buy exorbitantly priced LNG from a company with close connections to the Trump campaigns a dinner between Kimberly Guilfoyle, the PSD leader and an aide to President Dan was followed by the break-up of the coalition government over which Mr Bolojan presided and a political crisis that continues. 

La Guilfoyle is later said to have threatened to do the same thing to the Greek government if they did not buy the LNG. Implicitly she was offering East European politicians access to the Trump White House and the chance to make money with LNG contracts.

Viktor Orban thumbed his nose at European Union directives to phase out Russian gas, but went as a supplicant to Donald Trump, whose fierce supporter he was and at a meeting in the White House asked for and received a one-year waiver from U.S. sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. 

The price of this American indulgence was a $600 million commitment to purchase American LNG and nuclear fuel. 

Pure gangsterism. 

These are the methods of a successful New York real estate man.

Under her new Prime Minister Peter Magyar, Hungary remains trapped in this expensive American embrace. 

Though Mr Magyar has dutifully pledged to meet the European Union's 2027 deadline for a total abandonment of Russian energy, Hungary is still compelled to pay a ransom to the United States simply to keep its domestic grid alive, without any need for a visit from the seductive and brutal Kimberly Guilfoyle.