While the second Trump administration is taking heat for shutting down foreign funding of left-wing projects, one European nation is demonstrating how foreign aid can be used to benefit Christians around the globe. Tristan Azbej, Hungary’s state secretary for the aid of persecuted Christians and the Hungary Helps Program, appeared on Tuesday night’s episode of “Washington Watch” to discuss his country’s support for persecuted Christians.

Azbej explained that Hungary’s aid for persecuted Christians has several “major objectives. One is to save as many persecuted Christian lives as it is possible. One is to rebuild the Christian towns, the ancient Christian towns in the Middle East and the Holy Land that were destroyed by jihadists. One is to save Christians in northern Nigeria.” He continued, “And I could go on, but the other one is to inspire the rest of the world, the culturally or historically, formerly Christian world — bigger, more powerful governments than Hungary’s — and the international organizations to stand by the Christians.”

The Hungarian leader explained that the Biden administration was decidedly unhelpful in this mission. He reported that, over the past several years, Hungary has been “unfortunately not very successful” in encouraging other countries to support persecuted Christians. “And the reason for that is that when you try to partner up, for example, with Western European governments — who are governed by liberal parties — or when we try to partner up with the Biden administration, you see a hostile type of indifference or neglecting — a tendency to neglect — Christian persecution,” Azbej lamented. He noted that although Trump’s first administration was quick to partner with Hungary and support Christians, especially in the Middle East, the Biden administration was just as quick to cut ties with Hungary’s program. “[R]ight away it was canceled, this cooperation with the Biden administration,” he reported.

Over the past week, Trump effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), citing the federal agency’s funding of overwhelmingly left-wing projects internationally. Millions of American taxpayer dollars, the Trump administration revealed, had been funneled into such endeavors as putting on a “transgender opera” in Colombia or a “DEI musical” in Ireland, creating a “transgender comic book” in Peru, and initiatives to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities” or fund gender transition surgeries and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala.

Azbej discussed how foreign aid programs can be used to support Christians. “I am proud to report that we have provided aid to more than two million persecuted Christians or Christians in need in more than 50 countries,” he stated. “More than two million. Well, that is something for a small country to be proud of,” he added. Azbej continued, “But recent studies show that there are more than 380 million followers of Christ who are persecuted. So if you subtract two million from that, there [are] still hundreds of millions who need help.”

The Hungarian also explained why his country works so hard to support Christians around the globe. “We are a 1,000-year-old Christian nation, and we are proud of that. And I can say this — that we are [a] Christian nation — [and] as a government official, I’m not going to be fired tomorrow because of not being politically correct,” Azbej declared.

He continued, “The way we look at it is that we are a small nation who somehow survived between the big empires for 1,000 years. And we attribute this to the fact that our first king, King St. Stephen, offered Hungary to the Virgin Mary. So it has to do with our Christian heritage and understanding, our moral obligation to support our Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East and in other places where they are persecuted. We also understand it as a fact, not as a theory that the moment the last Christian will disappear from the Holy Land, that will be the end of all of the Christian civilization.”

He explained that Hungary’s work supporting Christians internationally is also “humanitarian, because Christianity tells us that we should not focus only on Christians. Christian solidarity is universal solidarity.” Azbej continued, “But if we see the facts today, Christianity is the most persecuted religious group in the world by numbers. Because of their faith, Christians are persecuted in the largest, largest numbers.” He clarified, “So not only our Christianity, but our general humanitarian sense, our general universal solidarity dictates that the Western countries should not abandon the Christians like they did when ISIS committed genocidal attacks against them in 2014, or like they do when Boko Haram commits genocidal attacks against them in Nigeria.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán praised Trump’s dismantling of USAID, as well as the results of his numerous executive orders. “In 14 days, Donald Trump has already turned the world upside down with a few measures. The gender madness in America is over, the financing of globalist Soros organizations is over, illegal migration is over, and support for the Russian-Ukrainian war is also over,” Orbán said in a social media post. He also acknowledged that Trump’s use of tariffs to benefit the U.S. meant saying “goodbye to the rules of world trade as we know them. President Trump will stand up for American interests, even against Europe.”

“The European Union faces difficult months ahead and the bureaucrats in Brussels are going to have a tough time,” Orbán predicted. He warned, “Everyone in Brussels can see the Trump tornado coming, but most still think they can get away from it. They won’t.” Addressing European Union bureaucrats, the prime minister observed, “We need to make an agreement, a deal, to preserve our economic relations with the United States. And a really good deal can be made by those who not only know but also respect each other.” He added, “We always knew that President Trump would return, so we were prepared. We are constantly negotiating, and we will make a good deal with the new administration of the United States. And what about the bureaucrats in Brussels? You’ve made your bed, now lie in it!”