The near-total freeze on foreign aid from the United States has many vocal detractors, but it also has passionate backers—and nowhere more so than in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s self-styled “illiberal democracy” has made him a darling of the global far right and an ally of President Donald Trump.
Hungary recently escalated its efforts to stamp out pro-democracy groups and media organizations that rely on foreign funding by naming a government minister to investigate USAID’s activities. Today, that minister, András László, was received in Washington by Peter Marocco, the top American official disassembling the agency from the inside. The meeting, which was confirmed to me by a U.S. official and another person familiar with the gathering, reflects the convergence of interests between Budapest and Washington. Like the Trump administration, the Hungarian government has giddily embraced the idea that U.S. aid programs are not only wasteful and unnecessary but also criminal.
“The Hungarian government has decided to closely follow the politically corrupt USAID funding scandal revealed by DOGE and Elon Musk,” László, a member of the European Parliament from Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party, wrote on social media last week. He added, “American and European patriots should work together to dismantle the globalist networks operated by Democrats.”
Before today’s meeting, Marocco ordered the termination of all USAID contracts in Hungary, according to the U.S. official I spoke with. Marocco also requested data from the agency’s staff about U.S. programs in Hungary stretching back years.
The goals of the Hungarian investigation, now furthered by U.S. officials, are wide-ranging. It aims to reveal the recipients of U.S. funds and, according to Hungarian right-wing media, “dismantle what officials describe as a deeply embedded international corruption network.” Musk, the billionaire DOGE co-founder who boasted last month of “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” has repeatedly referred to USAID’s work as “criminal,” without providing evidence. Since the inauguration, a DOGE team has embedded itself within USAID, gaining sweeping access to the agency’s payments system while thousands of USAID workers globally have been fired or placed on leave.
The State Department, USAID, and the Hungarian embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance have scolded and spurned traditional European allies. For solidarity, they have looked instead to Hungary, which has embraced its role as Europe’s enfant terrible, seeking closer ties to Russia and flouting European Union rules (it recently refused to pay a 200-million-euro fine for failing to comply with the bloc’s asylum policies).
Orbán’s standoff with Brussels is one aspect of a larger effort to steer his country in a more nationalist, authoritarian direction. The prime minister and his allies have steadily gained control over the country’s media landscape as part of a yearslong effort to limit dissent and consolidate power within government and across civil society. In the process, Budapest has cracked down on independent organizations reliant on foreign funding, painting them as enemies of the Hungarian state. The crackdown has included the ejection from the country of the Central European University, endowed by the billionaire financier George Soros.
These actions have endeared the Hungarian prime minister to Trump. Orbán traveled to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, multiple times during the U.S. presidential campaign last year, and then again in December to meet with the president-elect.
Today’s meeting wasn’t Marocco’s first audience with Hungarian-government representatives since he became the director for foreign assistance at the State Department. Last month, he reportedly met with Tristan Azbej, a Hungarian official responsible for programs aiding persecuted Christians.
The same week, Orbán vowed in comments on state radio that his government was taking legal action to eradicate nongovernmental organizations and media outlets receiving funding from the U.S. and other foreign sources. He cheered Trump’s moves against USAID and promised that Budapest would examine “line by line” groups funded by the agency.
USAID has supported a wide range of independent media and literacy programs in countries worldwide. In 2023, the agency funded training and other support for 6,200 journalists and aided 707 nonstate media outlets, according to Reporters Without Borders, a press-advocacy group based in New York. The 2025 foreign-aid budget allocated $268.4 million for “independent media and the free flow of information.” Among the media organizations in Hungary that relied on USAID funding is the investigative news website Átlátszó, which received up to 15 percent of its budget from USAID, according to the Financial Times.
The Hungarian government, meanwhile, argues that foreign-funded media organizations are “used as political tools to manipulate public opinion.”
“Their mission?” wrote Orbán’s spokesperson, Zoltán Kovács, of USAID-funded outlets. “To promote a specific ideological agenda, one that aligns with left-liberal interests, supports mass migration, and undermines governments that refuse to toe the globalist line.”
László, the Hungarian official tasked with leading Hungary’s probe of USAID activities, said in a video on X last week that he would “reach out to our American friends to understand how U.S. taxpayers’ money finally ended up in political projects in Hungary.”
“I believe we can work together based on mutual interests,” he added.
Trump-administration officials appear to agree.
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