national security strateg<\/a>y has pledged to promote.<\/p>\n\u201cI love Hungary, and I love Viktor. I\u2019m telling you he\u2019s a fantastic man,\u201d Mr. Trump said by phone from Washington, his words blasted around a Budapest concert arena, \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of Viktor. I\u2019m with him all the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Orban, he added to wild cheering, \u201chas done a fantastic job,\u201d by not allowing migrants to \u201cstorm your country and invade your country.\u201d The event, which featured music and a tirade against \u201cwoke\u201d by a TV presenter, was billed, as a \u201cmass rally on the occasion of Hungarian-American Friendship Day,\u201d a day invented for Mr. Vance\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n
The introduction of Trump-style campaign rally razzmatazz to Mr. Orban\u2019s faltering re-election effort came a few hours after a more subdued but no less fulsome in-person endorsement by Mr. Vance.<\/p>\n
Mr. Vance arrived in Budapest Tuesday morning, welcomed by an honor guard at the airport and then taken for talks with Mr. Orban, whom he hailed as \u201cone of the only true statesmen in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
After 16 years in power, however, Mr. Orban is struggling to find his footing as his Fidesz party trails badly in most polls ahead of Sunday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n
\u201cViktor Orban is, of course, going to win,\u201d Mr. Vance said at a new conference in Buda Castle overlooking the Danube River. Hungary under Mr. Orban and the United States under President Trump, Mr. Vance said, are bound together by a \u201cmoral cooperation\u201d in the \u201cdefense of Western civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Addressing Mr. Orban\u2019s biggest vulnerability in the election \u2014 Hungary\u2019s spluttering economy \u2014 Mr. Vance recited favorite Fidesz talking points. He blamed the European Union instead of the corruption and mismanagement that have been cited at virtually every campaign event of the opposition leader Peter Magyar, a conservative former Orban loyalist.<\/p>\n
European Union \u201cbureaucrats,\u201d Mr. Vance said, Mr. Orban at his side, had \u201ctried to destroy the Hungarian economy\u201d to sway Sunday\u2019s result \u201cbecause they hate this guy.\u201d Mr. Orban\u2019s leadership, he added, \u201ccan provide a model to the continent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether assists from the Trump administration will help is unclear. They will likely consolidate Mr. Orban\u2019s hard-core political base, some of whose members appeared at the Budapest stadium event on Tuesday wearing red MAGA hats.<\/p>\n
But they could alienate Hungarians alarmed by the war in Iran, which deviates sharply from what Mr. Orban has promoted as his \u201cpeace agenda.\u201d The war\u2019s consequent rising energy prices were something that Mr. Orban promised to prevent by cozying up to Russia in pursuit of reliable supplies of oil and natural gas.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump helped sway midterm elections last year in Argentina in favor of President Javier Milei but his support for conservatives in votes in Canada and Australia backfired and probably contributed to their defeat.<\/p>\n
At a time of war in the Middle East and a global energy crisis, Mr. Vance\u2019s trip to Budapest and Mr. Trump\u2019s phone call underscored just how important an election in a country with fewer than 10 million people and a tiny economy is to powerful nations far beyond its borders.<\/p>\n
Both the Trump administration and Moscow see Mr. Orban as a linchpin of their common antagonism toward Europe and are hoping the polls are wrong.<\/p>\n
The European Union, long hobbled by Hungarian obstruction on key issues like the war in Ukraine, hopes the polls are right, though it is not saying so publicly to avoid providing fuel to Mr. Orban\u2019s anti-European diatribes.<\/p>\n
Mr. Orban has put hostility toward Ukraine at the center of his campaign for re-election, presenting Fidesz as the only guarantor of security in the face of what he says are dangerous threats from Hungary\u2019s eastern neighbor.<\/p>\n
That line dovetails with messages from the Kremlin, which has also been open in trying to tilt the election toward Mr. Orban, not least by sending a steady stream of Russian energy supplies, which other E.U. members have mostly boycotted.<\/p>\n
Mr. Vance praised Mr. Orban\u2019s energy policy, which revolves around keeping Russian oil and gas flowing, and scoffed at efforts by the European Union since the 2022 start of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine to cut its previously heavy dependence on Russian supplies.<\/p>\n
Europe, he said, \u201cshould have been following the policies of Viktor Orban in Hungary.\u201d<\/p>\n
A day before Mr. Vance\u2019s visit, the Kremlin offered support to claims by Mr. Orban\u2019s government that Ukraine was involved in planting explosives near a pipeline carrying Russian natural gas through Serbia to Hungary.<\/p>\n
Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said on Monday that Ukraine had a history of sabotage and \u201cit is most likely that signs of the Kyiv regime\u2019s involvement will be found\u201d in the pipeline episode.<\/p>\n
Serbia\u2019s authoritarian president, Aleksandar Vucic, a close ally of Mr. Orban, said on Sunday that explosives of \u201cdevastating power\u201d had been found on a Serbian stretch of the pipeline to Hungary.<\/p>\n
Mr. Magyar, the leader of a Hungarian opposition movement, immediately questioned the veracity of the explosives claim and accused Mr. Orban of trying to spread panic before Election Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With showbiz hoopla and solemn ceremony, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday jumped into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[13624,1065,307,939,18608,422,2783,29318,14660,3591,11947,13621,334,329,25396,74,13623,4678,25397,350,29319],"class_list":{"0":"post-46639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-viktor-orban","8":"tag-donald-j","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-fidesz-party","13":"tag-hungary","14":"tag-international-relations","15":"tag-j-d","16":"tag-magyar","17":"tag-orban","18":"tag-peter","19":"tag-polls-and-public-opinion","20":"tag-putin","21":"tag-russia","22":"tag-tisza-hungarian-political-party","23":"tag-trump","24":"tag-united-states-international-relations","25":"tag-vance","26":"tag-viktor","27":"tag-viktor-orban","28":"tag-vladimir-v"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116478734803153184","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}