On Tuesday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance stepped into Hungary’s election campaign, urging Hungarians to back Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as the European Union’s longest-serving leader sought a fifth consecutive term. Speaking in Budapest at an election rally, Vance told supporters the United States, under President Donald Trump, wanted Orbán to succeed in the vote on Sunday, according to the Associated Press.
Vance’s remarks signaled the depth of Trump’s support for Orbán’s bid at a moment when Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party faces what the AP described as its toughest race in two decades. With five days before the April 12 election, Vance presented the contest as more than a domestic ballot and framed it as a struggle over immigration, civilizational identity, and the direction of governance in Europe.
At a campaign event at a sports arena in Budapest, Vance addressed a crowd of more than 1,000 Orbán supporters and campaigned openly for the incumbent leader. He told the crowd, “We have got to get Viktor Orbán reelected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?” and later asked attendees to “stand for Western civilization” and for “freedom, for truth, and for the God of our fathers.”
Vance then urged voters to go to the polls over the weekend and tied the call directly to Orbán’s leadership. “Then, my friends, go to the polls in the weekend. Stand with Viktor Orbán, because he stands for you, and he stands for all these things,” Vance said at the rally, according to the AP report.
In remarks during the visit, Vance also praised Orbán’s stance on immigration and his posture toward the European Union, including describing “faceless bureaucrats” and censorship as part of what he said were civilizational dangers associated with progressivism. He lauded Orbán for fighting those forces and for taking an adversarial approach to the EU, while also saying he was on the trip because Trump wanted Orbán’s success.
After Vance spoke, he used his phone to call Trump from the lectern. When Trump answered, he told the crowd through a microphone: “I love Hungary and I love that Viktor, I tell you he’s a fantastic man,” the AP said. Trump also said Orbán had not allowed migrants “to storm” and “ruin” Hungary and said Orbán “kept Hungarian people in your country.”
Orbán, for his part, cast the rally in broad political terms and linked domestic and international support. The AP reported that Orbán said “freedom-loving Americans and Hungarians must unite and save Western civilization” and added that Hungary had launched a “reconquista” of EU institutions, aimed at bringing “new patriotic governments to power.”
The AP described Orbán’s relationship with the EU as tense and often shaped by vetoes and clashes over policy, including his use of EU leverage in the months before the election. The report also said Orbán’s government has broken with most EU countries by refusing to help Ukraine with financial assistance or weapons against Russia’s invasion, and that it has remained committed to buying Russian energy despite EU efforts to reduce reliance on those supplies.
During a joint news conference earlier on Tuesday, Vance also criticized EU efforts around Russian fossil fuels, according to the AP. He said, “It’s funny to watch prime ministers and leaders in some of the Western European capitals talk about the energy crisis when frankly they should have been following the policies of Viktor Orbán,” and he described the EU as setting an example of foreign election interference that he characterized as among the worst he had seen or even read about.
Vance’s remarks at the rally did not address multiple recent reports that Russian secret services were meddling in Hungary’s election to tilt it in Orbán’s favor, the AP reported.