In Budapest, Vance goes all in for Orbán ahead of election

(CN) — U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary on Tuesday and tossed out a longstanding taboo against campaigning in a foreign election as he gave his blessing to far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ahead of Sunday’s elections.

Vance’s appearance in Budapest was billed as marking “Hungarian-American friendship day,” but the vice president effectively went on the campaign trail in a final push to boost Orbán’s sagging chances of reelection Sunday.

At a packed rally in Budapest, Vance even got U.S. President Donald Trump on the phone and placed him on the loudspeaker. Trump praised Orbán as “a fantastic man.”

“Under Viktor Orbán’s leadership, you have held on to the civilizational goods that make a country worth living in the first place,” Vance said at the rally.

He urged voters to back Orbán, whom he said had “stood up to the bureaucrats and the nihilists.”

“I wonder, will you do it again? Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels?” Vance said, whipping up the crowd. “Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth and for the God of our fathers?”

He then gave his full endorsement to Orbán: “Then my friends go to the polls and, this weekend, stand with Viktor Orbán because he stands for you and he stands for all these things.”

After 16 years in office, Orbán is in the political fight of his life with polls showing him trailing Péter Magyar, a 45-year-old former ally who’s become Orbán’s fiercest critic.

The election has been fraught with dirty tactics, bitter vitriol, accusations of foreign interference and leaks of secret phone recordings by intelligence agencies.

On Sunday, tensions were raised even higher after Serbia and Hungary said they uncovered an attempt to blow up a pipeline carrying Russian natural gas into Hungary. Orbán suggested Ukraine was likely behind the plot, but Magyar saw it as a “false flag” operation.

Throughout the campaign, Orbán has tried to stir fear among Hungarians by saying that if Magyar gets elected, the country would be led into a war against Russia alongside other European powers.

Vance’s trip highlighted Orbán’s oversized role in European politics and his importance on the world stage due to his close ties to Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. For them, Orbán is a rare ally in Europe who stands up to EU policies that run counter to their interests.

For Trump’s allies in America, such as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Orbán is revered for turning Hungary into a model state for the anti-liberal Christian nationalist worldview.

Under Orbán’s watch, Hungary became an ideological headquarters for the global far right by funding think tanks, conferences and media outlets that challenge liberal values and institutions.

In keeping with this approach, Orbán has attacked gay rights, encouraged couples to have lots of children, closed Hungary’s borders to asylum-seekers, cracked down on left-wing and liberal voices, concentrated power, welcomed Chinese companies, supported far-right parties across Europe and helped enrich his cronies.

But according to opinion surveys, Hungarians appear ready to turn the page on the Orbán era. Swaths of the electorate are converging behind Magyar, a relatively unknown figure before he made headlines in February 2024 by accusing Orbán and his Fidesz party of widespread corruption.

Magyar was previously married to Orbán’s former justice minister, but his association with Fidesz has not hurt him.

Magyar is a conservative and a nationalist but vows to turn Hungary back toward Brussels and away from Russia if he is elected. He has also vowed to support Ukraine.

Despite his conservatism, Hungary’s left-leaning voters appear ready to support Magyar because they see him as their best chance to oust Orbán. Meanwhile, Magyar has won over many rural voters, long loyal to Fidesz, by extensively traveling throughout the country. He leads Tisza, a center-right party that was largely irrelevant before he took its helm.

On Tuesday, Vance tried to turn the tide in Orbán’s favor by delivering a very warm message from Trump.

“The president loves you and so do I,” Vance told Orbán shortly after arriving, as reported by the media. He said Trump saw him as “one of the only true statesmen in Europe.”

At a news conference in Budapest with Orbán at his side, Vance praised the Hungarian prime minister for defending Christianity and “Western civilization.”

“There is so much that unites the United States and Hungary, and unfortunately, there have been too few people who have been willing to stand up for the values of Western civilization,” Vance said. “Viktor Orbán is the rare exception that has unfortunately proved the rule.”

Vance accused “bureaucrats in Brussels” of seeking to thwart Orbán’s ability to govern by withholding billions of dollars in EU funds, and he equated that to election interference.

The EU blocked the funds because it said Hungary had failed to tackle corruption and not taken steps to ensure the independence of the judiciary.

Vance called the actions by Brussels “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I have ever seen.”

“The bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary,” he said. “They’ve done it all because they hate this guy.”

Vance called Orbán “the single profound leader in Europe” for not cutting off cheap Russian energy supplies following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

“It is funny to watch prime ministers and leaders in some of the Western European capitals talk about the energy crisis, when, frankly, they should have been following the policies of Viktor Orbán in Hungary,” Vance said, referring to the energy crunch caused by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz following the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.

While Vance campaigned on behalf of Orbán, Magyar spent Tuesday visiting small Hungarian towns.

Magyar’s reaction to Vance’s presence in Hungary was nuanced. In one statement, he suggested Vance’s visit amounted to election inference, but he subsequently welcomed the prospect of working with Trump.

“No foreign country may interfere in Hungarian elections. This is our country. Hungarian history is not written in Washington, Moscow or Brussels — it is written in Hungary’s streets and squares,” he said in a first social media post.

He later said Tisza would “regard the United States as a key partner, both as a NATO ally and as an economic partner.”

He added that he would extend an offer to Trump and Vance to attend the 70th anniversary of Hungary’s uprising against the Soviet Union in 1956.

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau