BUDAPEST — As the hours ticked down to the Tuesday deadline his boss had set to escalate bombings in Iran, Vice President JD Vance’s day was consumed by another matter: helping the prime minister of Hungary as he faced his toughest election yet.
Vance arrived here several days before voters will determine the fate of the long-serving Viktor Orban, the far-right nationalist prime minister who is the Trump administration’s closest ideological ally in Europe.
“The president loves you, and so do I, because you’re such an important part of what has made Europe strong and prosperous,” Vance told Orban as the two, joined by their respective staff, sat before cameras. He called Orban, who has close ties with the Kremlin, “one of the only true statesmen in Europe,” and said he wanted to “come say good luck” before the election Sunday.
Across the long conference table, on the Hungarian government side, was Vance’s American friend Gladden Pappin, a fellow Catholic who moved to Budapest in 2021 and is now paid by the Hungarian government to run a state-owned think tank, the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. Pappin is one of a number of American conservatives — often strongly nationalist and religious-minded — who have gravitated to Hungary, holding up Orban’s government as a model of illiberal Christian democracy.
The effort to reelect Orban, who is trailing center-right rival Peter Magyar in polls, has become a test of whether the nationalist conservative movement can maintain power in Europe. In Orban’s words Tuesday, it is a fight for “the soul of the West.” Vance said the two governments represent “the defense of Western civilization.”
Orban has sought to stoke fears among voters and portray Magyar as a candidate who would drag Hungary into Russia’s war with Ukraine, while Magyar has framed the race as a referendum on alleged corruption in a government procurement system that has enriched members of Orban’s family and his closest allies.
During Orban’s November trip to Washington, Vance had offered to visit Hungary before the election, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. And despite the war in Iran, in which Vance has served as a negotiator, Trump administration officials said the White House felt strongly that he should proceed with the trip. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Hungary and spoke highly of Orban in February, and President Donald Trump in recent weeks endorsed Orban’s reelection bid by video and social media post.
Speaking at a news conference with Orban, one of several joint events planned for the pair over his two-day visit, Vance said he didn’t expect Hungarians to “listen to the vice president of the United States” about whom they should vote for. But as Trump posted online that “a whole civilization will die tonight” in Iran if his deal isn’t accepted, Vance sought to lay out a case for why Orban should remain in power, decrying “bureaucrats in Brussels” who he said were seeking to interfere against Orban in the election.
The two are scheduled to appear at a MAGA-style rally Tuesday evening in Budapest, where hundreds filed into seats in a sports complex hours before Vance and Orban were scheduled to take the stage.
Vance’s first weeks in the role of vice president last year included a speech at the Munich Security Conference that left European leaders shocked and offended as he chastised them for suppressing free speech and failing to halt illegal immigration, warning that their greatest threat came not from Russia or China, but from within. The vice president has since received warm welcomes during visits with officials in Italy and Britain, but none have been as closely aligned with his beliefs as Orban.
“Obviously, Orban thinks it can’t hurt, and obviously Vance thinks it’s important too or he wouldn’t be getting on a plane to go there in the middle of a war,” Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine, said of the vice president’s decision to travel to Hungary.
The visit this week is Vance’s second to the country. He made a personal trip there roughly five years ago, he said, with his wife, Usha, being 20 weeks pregnant on both trips.
As Vance arrived in Budapest on Tuesday, Orban’s challenger Magyar called on outsiders not to interfere in Hungarian politics.
“I strongly urge international political actors from Ukraine to Serbia, from Russia to America, not to try to interfere in the Hungarian elections,” Magyar said in a social media post. “We are not a testing ground or a stage for geopolitical games; this is our homeland, and its fate will be decided by Hungarian citizens.”
While Orban over the past decade took a forceful stance against migrants and refugees and proclaimed himself Europe’s champion of illiberal Christian democracy, Budapest became a magnet for American conservatives. His government put money into a network of think tanks that became hubs for MAGA and nationalist ideology, and that in turn provided channels for the Kremlin to filter its talking points to American right-wing groups.
Orban’s government has long assisted Moscow in seeking to stymie European Union sanctions against Russia over its war against Ukraine, and he is blocking a 90 billion euro E.U. loan for Ukraine that is critical to ensuring Kyiv can continue to defend itself.
Even though Orban’s government has been propped up by a steady stream of cheap Russian oil supplies, Hungary has steadily recorded among the lowest annual growth rates in Europe, currently at an anemic 0.4 percent, while it has also endured the highest peak inflation in Europe — 26 percent in 2023. Magyar, Orban’s chief opponent, has also railed against the government’s record of underinvestment in the country’s health care and education systems.
A Hungarian source who supports Orban, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political realities, said that “a few months ago, this visit would have been a real coup for the prime minister.”
But, the person said, Trump has increasingly “alienated” Europeans on the nationalist right, starting with his threats to invade Greenland — “even if he was joking, it was really offensive to a lot of people over here” — and now the economic devastation of Europe that some are bracing for as a result of Trump’s war with Iran. Even conservatives who cheered on Vance’s Munich speech last year, the person said, are less thrilled with the Trump administration now — meaning it’s unclear whether Vance’s trip can sway enough voters.
Orban’s campaign has been racked by reports his government colludes with Moscow, including reporting in The Washington Post citing a European security official that his foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, regularly telephoned Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to give “live reports” during breaks of sensitive E.U. meetings.
That claim was further bolstered when several independent investigative outlets, including Hungary’s VSquare, last week published a leaked recording of a call between Szijjarto and Lavrov in which they coordinated on an effort to help Russian billionaires, companies and banks win reprieve from sanctions imposed by the European Union.
Szijjarto did not deny the recording but played down the contents of the call, saying that the journalists had “proved that I say the same publicly as I do on the phone.”
Bloomberg News this week also published what it said was a transcript of a call between Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin in which Orban told the Russian leader that he was willing to go to great lengths to assist him, including to help settle the war in Ukraine by hosting a summit in Budapest.
“Yesterday our friendship rose to such a high level that I can help in any way,” Orban said, comparing the situation to “a story in our Hungarian picture books where a mouse helps a lion,” according to the transcript published by Bloomberg News. “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.”
Following the joint rally Tuesday evening, Vance is scheduled to speak Wednesday at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, or MCC, one of the most prominent Budapest cultural foundations promoting nationalist conservative and pro-Russian views.
The organization has become a hub for promoting figures within the MAGA movement, including Pappin, who previously worked there as a senior visiting fellow. MCC has been financed through a 10 percent stake in MOL, the Hungarian energy conglomerate that profits from a steady stream of cheap Russian energy.
Belton reported from London.
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