US V-P Vance picks fight with Europe over Hungary’s Orban in vote endorsement

BUDAPEST – US Vice-President J.D. Vance went to Budapest to criticise the European Union for allegedly meddling in the Hungarian election.

Then he endorsed Mr Viktor Orban as a model of leadership for the continent days before the make-or-break vote. 

Speaking alongside the Hungarian prime minister on April 7, Mr Vance said “the amount of interference that’s come from the bureaucracy in Brussels has been truly disgraceful”.

He provided no evidence for his claims.

No EU leader has campaigned alongside the Hungarian opposition in Budapest.

“I’ve seen a guy who’s ferociously advocated for the interests of Hungary,” Mr Vance said of Mr Orban on the first day of a two-day visit ahead of the vote on March 12. “I’m here to help him in this campaign cycle.”

Later, attending a closed-door election rally with Mr Orban, Mr Vance called Mr Donald Trump from the podium, holding the speaker up to the microphone so the US president could tell the crowd: “I love Hungary and I love that Viktor.” 

The vice-president doubled down, calling on the Hungarian voters to “go to the polls and stand with Viktor Orban”.

The visit fits into the pattern of an increasingly interventionist White House under Mr Trump, who backed Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in February’s snap election and propped up Argentinean President Javier Milei with a US$20 billion (S$25.51  billion) bailout.

Mr Trump also forcibly removed the leader of Venezuela while his ongoing bombing campaign of Iran has decimated Tehran’s leadership.

In Hungary, independent polls show Mr Orban is on track to lose power after 16 years in the April 12 ballot that’s become a geopolitical tug of war between the US and Russia on the one hand and much of the rest of the European Union on the other.

The EU is continuing to withhold more than US$20 billion of its funding for Hungary over rule of law and corruption concerns.

Mr Trump has long viewed Mr Orban, global populist icon and Mr Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in the EU, as a reliable partner who has been a vocal critic of Europe’s liberal democracies and a champion of his populist MAGA agenda.

The president publicly endorsed the Hungarian leader, calling him a “truly strong and powerful Leader”, and reiterated his support in a video message at March’s Conservative Political Action Conference event in Budapest.

Speaking at a panel in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka on April 7, Mr Trump’s son, Mr Donald Trump Jr, said “Orban has been a true fighter for western values”.

Mr Trump Jr urged Hungarians to do “whatever it takes, get out there and vote” for the man he described as his friend. 

Mr Orban has poured significant resources into cultivating his ties to Mr Trump’s MAGA movement, hiring right-wing intellectuals close to Mr Vance, like former Texas politics professor Gladden Pappin, who became the head of the government’s main foreign policy research institute in Budapest.

Another friend, conservative journalist Rod Dreher, lives in Hungary and works for a pro-government think-tank.

While Mr Vance also hailed Mr Orban as a leader who fights for Hungarian sovereignty, much of the election campaign has focused on how the longtime nationalist leader has let his country slip into the Kremlin’s orbit and how his government has been doing the bidding of an expansionist Russia that seeks to sow divisions inside the EU.

In an October phone call with Mr Putin, whose transcript was obtained by Bloomberg, Mr Orban compared himself to a “mouse” that helps the “lion”, Russia.

Earlier reports showed how the government in Budapest had intervened on behalf of Moscow to seek relief from the EU sanctions.

Mr Orban has made opposition to aiding Ukraine a key plank of his re-election bid.

In March, Hungary vetoed a key €90 billion (S$133.97 billion) EU lifeline to Kyiv in an escalating oil supplies dispute, as part of which Budapest seized a routine transport of cash that was on its way to Ukraine.

Geopolitics aside, polls show rising anger among Hungarians over a lackluster economy, a cost-of-living crisis, dilapidated social services and allegations of rampant corruption among a new class of super-rich with political connections to Mr Orban’s party.

The opposition Tisza party of Mr Peter Magyar, a former ruling elite insider turned critic, has capitalised on that anger and in a little over two years has mostly united opposition voters and disaffected former Mr Orban supporters.

Mr Magyar said Mr Vance’s visit was another indication of Mr Orban’s reliance on a foreign country to maintain his grip, following a flurry of reports over Russia’s efforts to keep its most reliable partner in Europe in office. 

“No foreign country can interfere in Hungarian elections,” Mr Magyar said in a statement. “This is our homeland. Hungarian history isn’t written in Washington nor in Moscow nor in Brussels, it’s written on the streets and squares of Hungary.” BLOOMBERG