US Vice President JD Vance said on the evening of the 13th of April that he was saddened, but not surprised, that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was not re-elected for another term, writes Politico.
Vance noted that the decision to participate in Orbán’s campaign was a show of loyalty, not an effort to get Orbán re-elected. He said in an interview with Fox News that it was only right to go support someone who has been close to US politicians for so long. The vice president’s statements mark the first comments from the White House since Orbán’s loss in the election, which ended the Hungarian’s 16-year reign in power. Orbán served as an inspiration to US President Donald Trump, Vance and countless representatives of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. He served as a model for the MAGA movement in many ways, and the movement praised Orbán’s “illiberal democracy,” seeking to introduce a similar model of governance in the United States. Orbán is also known for his opposition to immigration and restrictions on the rights of the LGBT community.
The US vice president said that Orbán had fundamentally changed the country. Vance’s decision to support Orbán was not made because he did not know how to read the polls: “We certainly knew there was a very good chance that Viktor would lose that election. We did it because he’s one of the few European leaders we’ve seen who has been willing to stand up to the bureaucracy in Brussels.”
However,
Vance’s failure to help Orbán avoid a stunning defeat exposes the US administration to criticism
that its ideas and officials are not quite what they had hoped to be, and also raises deeper questions about the future of populist nationalism.
Johan Norberg, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, said the situation for populists is embarrassing and in a way destructive. Much of the populist right-wing movement’s philosophy is based on the idea that it has real people on its side and owns the future. “Orbán being re-elected again and again was a very powerful sign of that to them. So his suddenly being voted out with the largest majority ever in a democratic Hungarian election is a devastating blow to that whole narrative,” the researcher added.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s senior White House adviser during his first term, wrote in a Politico op-ed that Orbán’s defeat should serve as a warning ahead of the US midterm elections in November.
Trump has yet to make a public statement about the defeat of his closest European ally, although reporters have repeatedly asked him about it. White House aides said on the 13th of April that there were more pressing issues to worry about, particularly the increasingly fragile ceasefire with Iran and the new US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz that Trump announced after direct talks with Tehran in Pakistan failed.
But just days before the election, Hungary was a priority.
Vance traveled to Budapest, and while Trump did not go to Hungary himself, Vance called him during his speech. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also visited Hungary just weeks earlier.
In a phone call to support Orbán, Trump highlighted the Hungarian autocrat’s tough immigration policies, saying his country doesn’t have the problems many other countries have. In addition to his own crackdown on immigration (which includes a large and aggressive deployment of immigration agents to a number of US cities), Trump has sought to replicate other aspects of Orbán’s policies, such as attacking the justice system and judges, trying to subdue the media, and weakening the government by firing officials.
Meanwhile, voters in Hungary have decided to stand up to Orbán’s government, which has been plagued by corruption amid economic stagnation. Norberg said it was a significant blow to the US administration and MAGA, which saw Orbán not just as an ally in Europe but also as an experiment — the Hungarian had been in power for 16 years and was doing what MAGA wanted to do.
Vance is the Republican Party’s leading candidate for the 2028 election,
and one of his political allies said the vice president should be aware of the parallels between the circumstances that led to Orbán’s defeat and America, where Trump’s popularity has fallen while the war in Iran has raised energy prices. The incident is a setback for Vance, who traveled to Hungary just before the election, and a setback for a leader the US administration had hoped to see in office for a long time. But euroscepticism is not going away either.
Several European leaders have rejoiced at Orbán’s loss in the election, and many are relieved that the person who blocked aid to Ukraine is no longer in power. One of them, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, visited the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, on the 13th of April and spoke cautiously about the issue. He was asked if he had any advice for countries like Germany, where support for far-right parties is on the rise, to which Stubb replied with reserve, but with a clear subtext: “You can take this as you wish. It’s quite often not very helpful for your own goals to meddle in the politics of another country.”
Read also: Americans in Budapest: Vance criticizes Brussels; Trump enthusiastically praises Orbán