But the Hungarian election had been a major priority just days earlier. JD Vance had traveled to Budapest last week and while Trump didn’t make the trip himself, he did call into the rally. And that eleventh hour campaign push came weeks after another visit by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Trump, in his remarks via telephone during Orbán’s rally aside Vance last week, credited the autocrat for his strict immigration policy in particular, stating that he “kept your country strong, and he kept your country good, and you don’t have problems with all of the problems that so many other countries have.”
Beyond his own immigration crackdown with an expanded and hyper-aggressive core of immigration agents deployed in dozens of American cities, Trump has modeled other aspects of his governance on Orbán’s own actions, be it vociferously attacking judges, bullying the media into greater submission or hollowing out the government by firing career civil servants.
But in Hungary, voters revolted amid a heightened focus on Orbán’s endemic corruption during a period of economic stagnation.
“This is quite the blow to the administration and MAGA ideology, because they thought of Orbán as not just a great friend and ally in Europe, but also as the laboratory, someone who’s been in charge for 16 years doing what they wanted to do,” Norberg said. “You can see that in everything from Project 2025 and how they wanted to dismantle checks and balances according to a Hungarian script.”
A political ally of Vance, the de facto 2028 GOP frontrunner who has long been a fan of Orbán, said that the vice president “has to be aware of the parallels” between the circumstances that led to the dictator’s ouster and an America where Trump’s poll numbers have dropped in recent weeks as the Iran war has driven energy prices higher.