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Trump’s Authoritarian Project Starts to Take on Water

Viktor Orbán’s defeat is just the latest example of the administration’s European ambitions’ being stymied.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and US Vice President JD Vance at a campaign rally for the prime minister in Budapest, Hungary, on April 7, 2026.

Five days before Hungarian voters threw Viktor Orbán to the curb, in the most significant setback to global far-right forces since Jair Bolsonaro’s 2022 reelection loss in Brazil, JD Vance staked what dwindling political capital he has left on the Hungarian autocrat’s reelection.

In an act of astonishingly overt election interference, Vance flew into Hungary on April 7 for a quick bout of campaigning on behalf of the OG of hard-right populism and his Fidesz party. Now, there’s nothing new about US officials using covert tactics to influence political events and elections overseas; leaders around the world do this, and certainly Americans have been no exception. But historically there has been something of a tacit understanding that, at least in public, one denies such sordid activities; after all, it doesn’t look good when a country avowedly committed to democratic ideals and the principle of self-determination shrugs off those ideals at the first opportunity. Under this administration, however, the gloves have been removed. When Trump officials want to secure a political outcome overseas, they do so openly, shamelessly, with not even a hint of awareness—or care—that this impinges on the sovereignty of other countries and their populaces.

Standing next to Orbán at campaign rally events, Vance praised the prime minister to the rafters, and even put Trump on speakerphone to also shower superlatives on Orbán, before slamming the European Union for what he called “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” and accusing the Brussels bureaucracy of attempting “to destroy the economy of Hungary.” The Guardian’s headline writers had some fun with it all: “JD Vance accuses the EU of ‘interference’ as he visits Hungary to help Orbán win election.”

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