Steven N.After several days of calling Minister for Economic Development Márton Nagy an “idiot,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary went a step further by comparing Nagy and Minister Gergely Gulyás, the head of the Prime Minister’s Office, to the lead characters in the 1994 film “Dumb and Dumber.”
As O’Leary told Euronews:
These two Hungarian ministers are like that Jim Carrey movie, “Dumb and Dumber,” if they think people will happily pay the extra tax and choose a more expensive airline from one day to another.
The low-cost airline got riled up after Viktor Orbán announced on May 25 that the government would be imposing an “extra-profit tax” on certain industries, including airlines. The state will levy an extra 3,900 Ft. (US $10.27) per ticket for European destinations, and 9,750 Ft. ($25.68) for destinations outside of the continent.
Ryanair announced it would pass on this new tax burden to passengers, which the government has protested, launching a consumer protection investigation over the matter.
Not to be outdone, Fidesz MEP Tamás Deutsch continued the name-calling on Thursday. Speaking to HírTV, the 55-year-old man expressed his view that the Ryanair CEO was a “male appendage.”
Cueing politically burlesque figures, such as Tamás Deutsch (and others) into a public discussion is a trademark-move Orbán makes whenever he needs to demonstrate his childish, bare-ass arrogance, without directly appearing too idiotic – “Send in the clowns!”