BUDAPEST — Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to throw Viktor Orban a political lifeline on Monday, as the Hungarian prime minister trails in most polls ahead of an election this spring that could see Europe’s most pro-Russian and longest-ruling prime minister voted out of power.
The top U.S. diplomat praised Orban’s leadership, signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with his government and defended issuing Hungary an exemption from U.S. sanctions despite Orban’s decision to continue buying Russian energy.
“We want this country to do well,” said Rubio standing alongside Orban during a news conference in Budapest, “especially as long as you’re the prime minister and the leader of this country.”
“President Trump is deeply committed to your success, because your success is our success,” Rubio added.
Rubio’s support for Orban marks the latest example of the Trump administration working to keep in power right-wing populist leaders who have praised President Donald Trump and are seen as ideologically aligned. In summer, political neophyte Karol Nawrocki narrowly won a presidential runoff in Poland after being invited to the White House by Trump.
In a post on Truth Social last week, Trump endorsed Orban for the April elections and called him a “truly strong and powerful Leader” and “a true friend, fighter, and WINNER.”
Whether the efforts by Trump and Rubio will help Orban prevail in the election remains far from clear in part because Orban’s opponent, Peter Magyar, is also conservative and has gained traction with an anti-corruption message.
Most polling shows Magyar’s party with a significant lead. “We’re standing on the threshold of victory with 56 days left to go,” Magyar said Sunday, as he formally launched his party’s election campaign in Budapest, vowing to crack down on corruption, return Hungary to its Western European orientation and end Orban’s nearly 16-year reign.
Magyar took control of the center-right Tisza party in 2024, the same year the party won about 30 percent of the vote in European Parliamentary elections. Before he pivoted to the center, he belonged to Orban’s Fidesz party.
Orban and his Fidesz party are considered by a growing cohort of U.S. conservatives as the intellectual vanguard of policies they seek to replicate in the United States, including hard-line immigration policies and Christian nationalism.
U.S. conservatives have praised Orban for establishing a fence on Hungary’s southern border in 2015 to keep out refugees fleeing from the Middle East and Africa. They have also praised him for cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights, such as banning the Budapest Pride celebration and approving facial recognition technology to identify scofflaws of the ban.
Hungary regularly plays host to U.S. conservatives at its Conservative Political Action Conference events, which will again convene in March.
Orban and the prime minister of neighboring Slovakia, whom Rubio visited on Sunday, are lonely voices in Europe in offering enthusiastic praise for Trump, who has angered traditional U.S. allies by imposing tariffs on them, threatening to take Greenland by force and attacking European digital regulations.
Both Hungary and Slovakia have hailed Trump’s efforts to engage Russia and have expressed skepticism about Western support for Ukraine. Orban underscored that point on Monday, using the same hypothetical scenario Trump routinely brings up in his own remarks.
“If Donald Trump had been the president of the United States, this war would never have broken out,” Orban said. “And if he were not the president now, then we would not even stand the chance to put an end to the war.”
Rubio expressed exasperation that Washington’s efforts, criticized in some parts of Europe for prioritizing Moscow’s demands over Kyiv’s, weren’t being hailed more widely.
“This is one of the few wars I’ve ever seen where some people in the international community condemn you for trying to help end a war, but that’s what we’re going to do as long as our role and engagement is a positive one,” Rubio said.
Orban also thanked the Trump administration for allowing Hungary to continue purchasing “cheap energy” from Russia despite significant efforts by the European Union to stop purchasing Russian oil and gas following the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Critics of Trump’s rapprochement with Hungary question how it serves U.S. interests.
“Hungary now buys a greater percentage of its oil from Russia than it did at the start of the invasion,” said Jeff Rathke, the president of American-German Institute and a former State Department official. “So it is unclear how Orban contributes to any U.S. objectives aside from the ideological project of supporting right-wing, anti-European, would-be autocrats.”
When asked about Hungary’s deepening business ties with China and Russia, Rubio said it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Budapest is pursuing its own national interests and emphasized the importance of Orban’s personal relationship with Trump.
“I’m going to be very blunt with you,” Rubio said. “The prime minister and the president have a very, very close personal relationship and working relationship, and I think it has been incredibly beneficial to the relationship between our two countries.”
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