The Richest Man in Florida
Introducing 'The Hungarian Connection'
In the final month before U.S. voters went to the polls in 2012, Hungarian-born billionaire Thomas Peterffy paid millions to air “Freedom to Succeed,” an anti-socialist, pro-Republican advertisement starring himself, for weeks on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. “I grew up in a socialist country and I have seen what that does to people,” he says in the low-quality ad. “Yes, in socialism the rich will be poorer. But the poor will also be poorer…”
Politico quipped that Peterffy “may be one of the breakout stars of the 2012 campaign.” At the time, he lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. A local news site said that Peterffy “is emerging as the conservative yin to the liberal yang of countryman George Soros.” In 2018, Peterrfy denounced Soros on TV as “basically an anarchist” who “should be put in jail or even worse.”
Now Thomas Peterffy lives in Florida, “a few mansions down” from Mar-a-Lago. He supported Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 with hundreds of thousands of dollars, but now is one of the most outspoken Republican megadonors backing Ron DeSantis (“my favorite man”) in 2024. “Sooner or later, he’ll be our president,” Peterffy says about DeSantis.
“It’s extremely unfortunate,” he told Jemima Kelly of the Financial Times after the 2022 midterm elections, “because [Trump]’s extremely likely to win the primary, and there’s no way he can win the general. So, we [big donors] have to get together and somehow make sure that he is not going to be the Republican candidate.” Kelly writes:
I ask him how much he is willing to spend on DeSantis, who, having decisively won re-election earlier in the month, is the only nationally known Republican with a chance of taking on Trump in the primaries. I get the sense that there is no limit.
As we talk, I spot a large, yellow-green iguana with a striped tail slowly making its way along the garden wall. I point it out excitedly because I am from England, and this is an exotic creature.
Peterffy gets up without saying anything and makes his way inside. After a minute or so, he reappears holding an enormous gun, aims and begins shooting. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. I turn away. Pop. Pop. Pop. Peterffy puts his weapon away and comes back to the table.
It’s no mystery why MAGA George Soros is so enthusiastic about the proto-fascist politician credited with “inventing American Orbánism.” Viktor Orbán, the far-right nationalist Prime Minister of Hungary, presented Peterffy with the Grand Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit in 2017, in part because “his active and selfless support of the Museum to Commemorate the Victims of Communism to be founded in Washington… [has] furthered the reputation of Hungary.” They met at least once more in 2021, and discussed “the view that mass illegal migration poses a threat to nations and their cultural identity.”
Thomas Peterffy has in fact been a major supporter of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), and served on the board of trustees from at least 2015-19. Lee Edwards, the VOC co-founder that we covered last week, recalled in his memoir, “With a generous gift from Hungarian-born Thomas Peterffy… VOC initiated in 2016 an advertising campaign at major U.S. airports—and Times Square in New York City—that exposed collectivism and promoted free enterprise. We also began planning seriously for 2017, the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.”
Thomas Peterffy is the chairman and president of Balance for Freedom, an obscure non-profit organization, which as far as I can tell, has flown under the radar except for the fact that it gave over $300,000 to far-right youth group Turning Point USA. From 2015-18, Peterffy’s non-profit donated more than $2,000,000 to the American Enterprise Institute, and a whopping $6,604,464 to the “Victims of Communism.”
By 2021, Peterffy joined forces with the former leadership team at VOC to take over the Common Sense Society, an international organization based in Budapest that has cozied up to Ron DeSantis and other “National Conservatives.” Stay tuned for more about VOC’s role in the “Orbánization of America,” next week in “The Hungarian Connection”…