After 16 consecutive years in power, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is in the fight of his political life ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for Sunday. Recent polls show Orban’s long-dominant Fidesz party trailing the opposition Tisza Party by double digits, though many voters remain undecided.
The Trump administration, eager to see its right-wing populist ally pull off an upset, dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Hungary to try and boost Fidesz’s prospects. “Viktor Orban is, of course, going to win,” Vance proclaimed at a joint press conference in Budapest on Tuesday. He praised Orban as an ally in the “defense of Western civilization” and castigated “the bureaucrats in Brussels” for trying to “destroy the economy of Hungary” in order to undermine Fidesz’s reelection campaign.
Vance’s trip is another example of the Trump administration’s willingness to depart from long-established U.S. diplomatic norms of not openly campaigning on behalf of a candidate in a foreign election. Trump himself is fond of endorsing a candidate and claiming credit for their victory, as he has done with Argentine President Javier Milei and Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae.