As the US vice-president wades into a heated campaign, Hungary’s leader faces the real possibility of defeat
Even before the plane carrying JD and Usha Vance had landed in Budapest, the Hungarian government had hailed their two-day visit as a new golden age in the relationship between Washington and Budapest.
What came next was a whirlwind of politics in which the US vice-president waded directly into the country’s heated election campaign, just days before Hungarians cast their ballots.
As Vance crisscrossed the capital, turning up at the city’s Carmelite monastery and a later at a pre-election rally, he lauded Viktor Orbán and lambasted the US and Hungary’s “shared threat from within” of far-left ideology in universities, media and entertainment, all while breaking sharply with the unspoken convention that has long kept most politicians from playing an active role in foreign elections.
Vance’s sharpest criticism of the day was reserved for the EU in comments that were likely to roil the already tense transatlantic relationship. Vance attacked the bloc, accusing it of foreign interference, even as he repeatedly stressed he had travelled to Hungary to “help” Orbán in the elections.
