WASHINGTON (AP) — In Hungary, US President Donald Trump and his top officials used social media and an election-eve trip to Budapest to promote the country’s far-right prime minister in his reelection campaign.

In Argentina, the US administration worked to prop up the country’s financial markets to the tune of $20 billion — then Trump threatened to pull the assistance if its elections didn’t go his preferred way.

And in Honduras, he backed a conservative former mayor for president — and pardoned a predecessor from the same political party as Hondurans were preparing to vote.

In his second term, Trump has made a public flex of his political influence abroad on a scale that few if any US presidents have exerted, trying to marshal power that he’s used domestically to sway races in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Using endorsements to reward loyal and like-minded leaders, he has shattered a US tradition of avoiding overt involvement in the internal politics of other countries, and made the use of some foreign policy tools more about politics than about advancing US interests, according to his critics.

“The impact of that is to really cheapen a relationship,” said David Pressman, who served as the US ambassador to Hungary during the Biden administration. Pressman, who was on the ground in Budapest as Orban publicly backed Trump in 2024, said Hungarian positions on key issues such as Ukraine felt “infused through a political US rubric,” rather than articulated as sovereign foreign policy.

The most significant test yet of Trump’s political power abroad may come Sunday, when voters in Hungary render a verdict on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s bid for a fifth term.

Orbán was the first European leader to back Trump during his 2016 run and remained a close ally even during Trump’s period of political exile, making sojourns to see him in south Florida and again endorsing the Republican in his 2024 comeback race.

“I love Hungary and I love that Viktor,” Trump said this week as Vice President JD Vance, visiting Budapest, put him on speakerphone at a rally with more than 1,000 Orbán supporters.

Trump says he loves to pick winners

Trump has long reveled in his status as kingmaker in the Republican Party. Now, he boasts that foreign leaders come to him seeking his approval.

“I love it when I give endorsements and people win,” Trump said last month at a summit with several Latin American leaders whom he had backed.

Often, his picks share his policy views, like fellow immigration hard-liners Orbán and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, or the chainsaw-wielding Argentine President Javier Milei, who used the tool to illustrate his zeal to slash spending.

Trump and his officials have often used the Conservative Political Action Conference as a stage for promoting their........

© The Times of Israel