The Trump administration is doing everything possible to get Hungary’s Orban re-elected
US President Donald Trump wants it to be known that Hungarians should re-elect Viktor Orban, if it wasn’t already clear.
“I I was proud to ENDORSE Viktor for Re-election in 2022, and I am honored to do so again,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday night.
In fact, Trump has endorsed Orban at least twice before this year. He also praised Orban’s bid for a sixth term as Hungary’s prime minister on TruthSocial last month, and on Sunday sent a video message to the Hungarian version of the Conservative Political Action Conference.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Budapest in February and publicly endorsed Orban. That visit received a reprimand from Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, who pointed out that Rubio, in his previous role as a member of the parliament, signed the 2019 bipartisan conference letter expressing concern that Hungary is on the downward path from a democratic government.
If that wasn’t enough, Vice-President JD Vance – who has lectured Western European countries on the perceived shortcomings of their free speech programs – will travel to Hungary to visit Orban, who was once called a “freedom hunter” by Reporters Without Borders.
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As the Republican party shifts away from the George W. Bush presidency to Trump, conservatives have become obsessed with the Hungarian prime minister. Orban received a warm welcome at CPAC 2022 and events hosted by the American think-tank. The Heritage Foundation, which played a major role in creating the 2025 Project plan for Trump’s return to the presidency, praised Orban, “under his leadership in Hungary on immigration, family policy, and the importance of the country’s state is an example of the last regime.”
Under Trump’s second administration, the US could be seen imitating Hungary in its public display of Christianity from social media, and its reluctance to immigrate from Muslim-majority countries, although Republicans have not been as blunt as Orban’s declaration at CPAC in Dallas that “we don’t want to be mixed-race people.”
Some analysts have also detected, in Trump’s second term with his Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, an Orban-like attempt to domesticate and influence independent media companies.
Trump, in a speech on Tuesday, also said that Orban is working hard to “grow the economy” and “create jobs,” even though under his leadership, Hungary has been among the poorest performers in the European Union. Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Commission, has put Hungary’s real GDP growth in 2025 as the third last in the EU.
Although Trump has complained about what he considers “election meddling” on the home front — a very broad list that includes the Ontario government’s recent ad criticizing the US tax — he has a history dating back to his first term of making his preferences known in foreign elections from Brazil to Israel to Poland. He went further last fall with Argentina, appearing to signal that the exchange of billions of dollars to prop up the peso depends on their mid-year results.
Whether US cheerleading for Orban this time will catch on anywhere, or backfire, remains to be seen.
Trump’s threats to make Canada another country of the US, and the change of leadership from Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney, revived the fortunes of the Liberal Party in last year’s election, and a few weeks later, some think that Trump’s struggle with coalitions did not work well with members of Australia, with the Labor Party in that country exceeding expectations before the campaign to win a majority government.
The outcome of this week’s election in Denmark is still not clear, but Trump’s threats to take over Greenland were such that the candidates backed off from praising the former US president – not insultingly like a member of the Danish People’s Party in Brussels – and focused instead on pressing domestic issues.
Orban’s team also asked for evidence from friendly voices around the world. The leaders of Israel, Italy and Argentina – and actor Rob Schneider, of Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo fame – he sang his praises in the campaign’s first video.
Rumors of Orban’s downfall have been exaggerated in another election since he returned to power in 2010 – he was prime minister from 1998 to 2002 – as his popularity has been bolstered by friendly media campaigns and sweeping changes to the electoral system.
But polls this year have consistently shown that Orban faces an uphill battle against Peter Magyar of the Tisza party.
Hungarians are not asked to support a politician on the other side of the political spectrum, and Magyar is considered to be on the center right. Until two years ago, Magyar was affiliated with Orban’s Fidesz Party.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accused Ukraine of an ‘oil embargo’ against his country by delaying the reopening of a key Russian oil supply pipeline – the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline. CBC’s Briar Stewart breaks down the hostile atmosphere.
During his time in power, Orban often mobilized support by accusing Budapest-born George Soros of encouraging Muslim immigration and undermining Christianity in Hungary, with funding from the Soros-led Open Society Foundation of activist groups and, for a time, a university led by former Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff. It was a strange development, as before his hard-right turn, Orban as a young man received a pre-OSF Soros grant to study at Oxford University in England.
But Soros, 95, has withdrawn from public life, and Open Society has less of a foothold under his son than it did a few years ago.
If any person can be said to be equal to the role of the post-Soros foreign geyman in this campaign, it is undoubtedly President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of neighboring Ukraine. In both the EU and NATO, Orban has often been the least vocal in opposing financial and military support for Ukraine as it has been invaded by Russia, led by Orban ally Vladimir Putin.
Last week, Orban angered many in the EU by blocking a 90 billion euro ($143 billion) aid package for Kyiv.
Orban has dismissed allegations that his government is not accepting Ukrainian refugees from the four-year war, and tensions between the countries have flared this year after a key pipeline in Ukraine was damaged in January and left unrepaired, cutting off Hungary’s access to Russian oil. For good measure, Hungary recently seized millions of Ukrainian goods temporarily.
The campaign between Orban and Magyar has reportedly been sour, with the opposition accusing the administration of “treason” after the Washington Post reported last week, citing a European security official, that Orban’s foreign minister had been making frequent phone calls during breaks in EU meetings for years to brief his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
The minister, Peter Szijjarto, dismissed the report with two familiar words: “fake news.”
