It has been an abysmal week for US president Donald Trump and his vice-president JD Vance. For Vance in particular, things could not have been worse. Ordered by the idiot king to fly to Budapest in a forlorn last-minute mercy dash to save the government of Viktor Orbán, he abased himself by a combination of lies and bombast. He lied that he was not seeking to influence the outcome of the election – an odious pretence that survived about half a minute into his speech at an Orbán rally.

His speech included a live, long-distance intervention by Trump. Trump thought he could make extravagant economic promises to Hungarians which would swing the vote to re-elect Orbán. He tried the same tactic recently in Argentina to greater effect, securing re-election of Javier Milei – now ensnared in a $5 million bribery scandal linked to the launch of a cryptocurrency scheme.

Trump’s regime has been focusing its efforts on damaging and subverting the European Union. One of its chief allies in this endeavour was the government of Orbán. Binyamin Netanyahu, for whom there is an International Criminal Court trial in prospect, has been welcome in Orbán’s Budapest. Orbán’s government has been found leaking EU ministers’ confidential discussions concerning Ukraine to Vladimir Putin.

A publicly-stated American strategy of intervening in........

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