Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán credited Donald Trump for his country passing a bill banning Pride celebrations last week.

In 2021, Hungary passed a “child protection” law that bans depictions of homosexuality to people under the age of 18. This includes mentioning LGBTQ+ people at schools and depictions in the media of “gender deviating from sex at birth.”

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David Pressman arrived in Budapest two months ago with his husband and their two children and made a point of sharing the event on social.

But Pride was still allowed in the Eastern European country. Last week, Parliament voted for a bill to ban Pride celebrations and allow law enforcement officials to use facial recognition technology to track down people who attend.

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When asked what had changed since 2021, Orbán cited the election of Trump in the U.S.

Orbán said that Pride “shouldn’t have existed earlier” but that the U.S. ambassador to Hungary in the Biden administration — David Pressman, who is gay and a vocal critic of Hungary’s democratic backslide —marched in Budapest’s Pride festivities, “which clearly showed that the world’s great powers supported it.”

But the election of Trump took the “American boot” off Hungary’s chest and allowed them to “breathe,” Orbán’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas told journalists.

“But now the world has changed, and the Americans have called these types of ambassadors back home,” Orbán said last month. “It’s clear that [Pride] won’t have international protection.”

“In terms of international pressure, Orbán is now liberated,” said the leader of the Hungarian opposition party Momentum Movement, Márton Tompos. “It’s like he’s saying, ‘Okay, Trump won, and now I can do anything I want.'”

Hungary isn’t the first country to cite Trump as the reason they’re cracking down on LGBTQ+ people. In November, Uzbekistan’s government coalition announced that they were working on a law to ban LGBTQ+ “propaganda.” Alisher Qodirov, leader of the Milliy Tiklanish (National Revival) party, shared a post written by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, about “transgender ideology” in schools.

“The change in the center of the disease is very good,” Qodirov wrote. “We are working on adopting a law prohibiting any kind of propaganda in this regard.”

The Washington Post notes that several other Eastern European countries, including Serbia, are openly saying that Trump’s election is allowing them to violate their citizens’ human rights.

Trump “is bringing together autocrats and would-be autocrats around the world,” Carnegie Europe Director Rosa Balfour said. “What they share is a radical right agenda, and they are much more connected in their policies and goals than we have been assuming.”

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