Vance in Budapest: Viktor Orbán’s last throw of the MAGA dice

JD Vance will visit Hungary on Tuesday in an 11th-hour attempt to boost key MAGA ally Prime Minister Viktor Orbán before an all-important election on Sunday, but the U.S. vice president’s trip appears unlikely to swing an increasingly bitter race.

Orbán says he is “looking forward” to Vance’s trip, and with a Budapest press conference and a flag-waving rally at a 24,000-seat football stadium on Tuesday will be attempting to seize what momentum he can from it.

For the Hungarian prime minister it’s a singular opportunity to portray himself as the Trump administration’s pre-eminent European ally.

For the White House, the visit is a sign of appreciation that Orbán stuck with Trump through the tougher times — especially his four years out of power and his 2024 election campaign — when other world leaders shunned him.

Dislike for Trump among Hungarians is generally not as high as in Western Europe — but endorsements from the U.S. administration are far from a seal of victory.

While Orbán is a major thorn in the side of the European Union — he is currently blocking the EU’s €90 billion loan for Ukraine — backing him overtly isn’t meant to send a message to the rest of Europe, the White House official said.

“We need allies around the world that share our values over here and that have leaders who will want to work with us and have good relationships with us,” the official said. “That’s a key point we want to get across: that working with the U.S. and being close with the U.S. is a good thing.”

Isolationists in this forum who justify abandoning America's commitment to Ukraine because President Zelinski appeared in Pennsylvania in an appearance that seemed to support Biden's election, might take note of the direct and unmasked interference by this administration in Hungary's election.

Like the AFD in Germany, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary has swallowed the MAGA program whole. Unfortunately, the aping of MAGA goes beyond strict immigration control, which is the primary source of voter attraction to the AFD and to Orban's party, a measure desperately needed in Europe as well as in America, but it includes embracing Putin's criminal aggression in Ukraine.

The ascension of AFD in Germany to control is dangerous, not because they are fascist, but because they will sacrifice all to the policies of Vladimir Putin, his oil and minerals, and to their ambitions for a market in China.

The article notes:

Dislike for Trump among Hungarians is generally not as high as in Western Europe — where the U.S. leader has an almost 80 percent unpopularity rating…

This is a degree of animosity that I can anecdotally confirm among my neighbors in Germany. It was aroused not just by Iran but it includes Greenland, the abandonment of Ukraine, threats against NATO and a series of gratuitous insults.

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