Where did the "cowardly chickens" come from? Why Orban's words don't mean what you're led to believe

# Translation to English, preserving HTML markup:

On February 13, 2025, a video with the headline: “Orban spoke out against the EU elite! #orban #politics #trump #news #eu #europeanunion #usa #right” was published on the YouTube channel CTVBY. The video collected more than 600 thousand views.

The content of this story:

The ruling European elites can no longer protect the interests of their citizens. The Prime Minister of Hungary made such a bold statement at a meeting with Alice Weidel, representative of the “Alternative for Germany” party. According to Viktor Orban, the time has come for strong political forces that are capable of bearing the responsibility placed on them and whom people will follow. And the heads and leaders of the European Union and European institutions are absolutely helpless and waiting for instructions from their master in Washington. Orban, without hesitation, even compared them to cowardly chickens.

Our verdict based on the analyses conducted:

Verdict: Incorrect

Reasons:

• The thesis or statement is completely false: information from several sources or opinions of several experts in a specific field contradict it.
• Cause-and-effect relationships and connections clearly do not exist as claimed.
• When quoting, essential parts are omitted, rearranged, altered, or incorrectly translated from a foreign language, resulting in a fundamental change in the meaning of what was said.
• The event occurred differently in substantial aspects than claimed.

Fact-checking rating scale

Full video:

To verify the original content, a recording of the press conference was found on Viktor Orban’s channel: Sajtótájékoztató Alice Weidellel, az AfD elnökével 🇭🇺🇩🇪 (Teljes adás):

Using AI tools, speech-to-text transcription was performed.
What the original statement sounds like:

És végezetül a gazdaság, ezt is kérdezte, terítszend a economic consequences of Trump government in the USA. A baj az, hogy az Európai Unió vezetői és az Uniós intézmények, mint a gyávanyulok ülnek a barázzába, a szántásba, mint akik válják a végezetüket. Tehát gyávanyuloknak nincs kövőük.
És ott ülünk, vagy mint a kigyóáltal megbabonázott majom, mindegy, ott ülünk, és várjuk, hogy mit fog csinálni az amerikai állnök. Ez egy leggrosszabb dolog, amit tehetünk, mert az amerikai állők, ha majd jön, és olyanokat fog csinálni, hogy bele fogunk izadni. Jön és képzisáni fogja a saját érdekeit.
Nekünk egyetlen lehetőségünk van, föl kell állni bátran, erőtejesen, maga biztosan, és javaslatokat kell tenni az amerikaiaknak. Ők nyilván nem akarják elfogadni, hogy fönmaradjon az amerikai -európai kereskedelmi egyesmültalanság. De nekünk nem várni kell a támadásra, mint a nyúlnak, mondtam a barázdába, ha nem ki kell állni, és azt kell mondani, nekünk van a jálatunk.

Basic translation by traditional Google Translate shows that the content was different:

And finally the economy, he also asked about it, will it spread the economic consequences of the Trump government in the USA. The problem is that the leaders of the European Union and EU institutions are sitting in a ditch like cowards, as if waiting for their fate. So, cowards have no followers.
And we sit there, or like a monkey enchanted by a snake, it doesn’t matter, we sit there and wait for what the American president will do. This is the worst thing we can do, because if American workers come and start doing something like that, we will have to sweat. He will come and represent his interests.
We have only one way out: we must stand up boldly, decisively, confidently and make proposals to the Americans. They obviously don’t want to accept that the US-European trade imbalance will persist. But we should not wait for an attack, like a rabbit, I said, into the furrow, if not, we must stand up and say that we have a game.

Now the most important thing from the field of strategic communications.
No European media, with the exception of a few Hungarian ones, disseminated these narratives of the Hungarian Prime Minister.

Now let’s perform an analysis of disinformation narratives and semantic analysis: