Amid strains in U.S.-European relations, the Trump administration has worked to strengthen ties with Hungary and its far-right leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is facing his biggest challenge in 16 years. With just days to go before parliamentary elections, Orbán’s Fidesz party is trailing the center-right pro-EU Tisza party led by Péter Magyar. U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Budapest this week and appeared alongside Orbán to openly campaign for his reelection.

“This election is really crucial, not just for Hungary, but for the international right wing,” says Kim Lane Scheppele, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University. “There’s been a lot of American signaling that the U.S. would really love to have Viktor Orbán be reelected. The problem is the Hungarian people don’t seem to agree.”

Scheppele also discusses the role of Sebastian Gorka, a top counterterrorism official in the Trump administration, who has longstanding ties to the far right in Hungary and has been instrumental in forging closer ties between the two governments. According to a recent New York Times investigation, Gorka is also leading an effort to target left-wing groups in the United States and abroad as “terrorist organizations.”

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to the one country in Europe where the transatlantic relationship has only gotten stronger under the Trump administration: Hungary. But that relationship is about to be tested, because as Hungary goes to the polls Sunday, far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is facing his biggest challenge in 16 years.

Polls show the center-right party led by Péter Magyar with a significant lead over Orbán’s party in the days before Hungary’s parliamentary election. The latest polls show Orbán’s party has the support of 39% of decided voters; 52% back his opponent’s party; 25% of voters said they’re undecided.

Orbán has been prime minister of Hungary since 2010, making him the European Union’s longest-serving leader. Earlier today, he accused his political opponents of trying to seize power, in a video message posted to social media.

PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR ORBÁN: [translated] Our opponents will stop at nothing to seize power. They are colluding with foreign secret services, threatening our followers with violence, and calling out election fraud with fabricated accusations even before the election. They are organizing demonstrations and chaos even before your votes have been counted. Let us speak clearly. This is an organized attempt to question the decisions of the Hungarian people through chaos, pressure and international discredit.

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, U.S. — that’s U.S. — Vice President JD Vance traveled to Budapest, where he appeared alongside Prime Minister Orbán and openly campaigned for his reelection.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Will you stand against the bureaucrats in Brussels? Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy? Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth and for the God of our fathers? Then, my friends, go to the polls in the weekend. Stand with Viktor Orbán.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined from New Haven, Connecticut, by Kim Lane Scheppele. She’s professor of sociology and international affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Her research examines the rise and fall of constitutional government with a focus on Hungary.

Professor, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why is Hungary so critical? And what is the U.S. Vice President JD Vance doing there? He’s now headed off to Pakistan to lead the negotiations with Iran.

KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yeah. So, yes, this election is really crucial, not just for Hungary, but for the international sort of right wing. Viktor Orbán has controlled Hungary for 16 years. He’s become a dictator, though he doesn’t like to call himself that. It’s crucial to have a state in Europe, with the resources of a state, backing sort of the undermining of the European Union, backing the kind of policies that Donald Trump has had, so it’s not surprising that the Trump administration has been strongly backing Orbán. JD Vance’s visit this week was the second visit by a high-level Trump administration official. Remember that Marco Rubio went to Budapest right after the Munich Security Conference. So, there’s been a lot of American signaling that the U.S. would really love to have Viktor Orbán be reelected. The problem is the Hungarian people don’t seem to agree.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán speaking to reporters during a joint news conference with Vice President JD Vance this week.

PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR ORBÁN: [translated] Vice President, my dear friend, Vice President, it has been 35 years since a vice president last visited Hungary, and we have not had such a high-ranking guest from the United States for 20 years. Twenty years is a long time between friends. With the election of President Trump, a golden age has dawned in our relations. As we have just looked at 2025, we see it was a year of records in economic cooperation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Prime Minister Orbán, who was standing next to JD Vance at this joint news conference. Why is Hungary, led by Orbán, so important for Europe right now, particularly the right in Europe? And what would it mean if he loses? And why would JD Vance care about that?

KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yeah, so, Viktor Orbán, first of all, is so far behind in the polls that even his rigged election system will probably not save him this time. And it’s causing some panic in the right wing in Europe, because once Orbán consolidated power in Hungary, he then spent a huge amount of Hungarian money — we think up to 1% of total Hungarian GDP — on an effort to influence and to build a far-right network across Europe. So, in the last European elections, for example, Orbán’s Fidesz political party was the primary advertiser on behalf of far-right parties across Europe. And as you know, those European elections tilted quite heavily in favor of the far right. Orbán came out of those elections not only with a substantial victory in Hungary, but he was actually able to cobble together the third-largest party in the European Parliament, which has really tilted European policy in favor of the right. So, he’s the king maker in Europe in terms of building far-right cohesion.

And the Trump administration has been echoing Orbán’s language. In fact, if you look at the national security strategy that the U.S. released back in the fall, it could almost have been written by Orbán. The language is exactly the same. And the code word for the far right now is the “patriots” in Europe, because the Patriots is the name of Orbán’s European-wide political party.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about a very interesting figure in the Trump administration. That’s Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s deputy assistant to the president, senior director for counterterrorism. He advised Trump in his first term, but was pushed out after The Forward revealed he once had ties to a Hungarian far-right, Nazi-allied group and that he supported an antisemitic and racist paramilitary militia in Hungary while he served as a Hungarian politician. Gorka is Hungarian.

KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yeah, so, Gorka is actually a complicated figure. He was raised in Britain by far-right parents. And in fact, the far-right organization that he supported is actually not neo-Nazi, but Nazi. His father was a member of a Nazi-aligned group when the Nazis were actually dominating Europe. When Gorka showed up at Trump’s first inauguration, he wore not only the insignia, but also the uniform of the original Nazi paramilitary organization. After that was discovered, he then got marginalized. He got kicked out of the White House. But he’s been still aligned with Trump forces. So, now Gorka has come back as counterterrorism director in the White House.

But, you know, Gorka has this interesting history in Hungary. After the Berlin Wall came down, he moved from Britain to Hungary. He worked in the Hungarian defense establishment, and he got to know the Hungarian government very well. He then briefly founded a rival political party to Orbán’s political party when Orbán was out of power in the 2000s. And then, when there was a kind of discussion between, shall we say, Gorka and Orbán, Gorka agreed to dissolve his party, and the people from Gorka’s political party went straight into Orbán’s party, where they still are now. OK? So, Gorka has direct personal ties with Orbán, so it’s not surprising. And Gorka speaks Hungarian, etc. So he’s the point person in the White House who has the direct contacts with the Orbán team.

AMY GOODMAN: Thursday’s New York Times had an interesting story headlined “U.S. Pushes Allies to Chase a New Terrorism Target: The Far Left.” It’s a push to designate far-left and anti-fascist groups overseas as terrorist organizations, and pressure those countries to investigate the groups and find links between left-wing groups abroad and Americans. The leaders of this initiative — and I’m reading from the Times right now — the leaders of this initiative, according to the piece, include Sebastian Gorka. Your final comments?

KIM LANE SCHEPPELE: Yes, yeah. So, Gorka heads counterterrorism, so that’s the weapon he’s going to use. And, of course, after 9/11, there’s a huge counterterrorism network and a huge set of counterterrorism resources available for going after enemies of different kinds. And what Trump is trying to do, and what Orbán has already done in Hungary, is to start labeling — and I wouldn’t even call it the far left, right? It’s the entire left, as the opposition to these far-right groups. And they’ve — so far, they’ve been using media denigration, making fun of them, trying to establish and argue for networks that aren’t there.

But this move to start to label any kind of group that these governments don’t like, that these patriot groups in Europe don’t like, as part of a far-left network is, first of all, false. The network doesn’t exist. But second of all, it’s a way of trying to weaponize these resources that governments have against the left so as to get them out of the way so the right has a better chance of coming to power in European governments.

And yes, the U.S. is entirely behind this. The U.S. is also talking about setting up — they’ve destroyed Voice of America and the other kind of global networks the U.S. used to have, but now they’re talking about actually building in Europe a kind of, you know, Fox News for Europe, in order to, again, give the far right a push.

So, this is all playing out on the political field. Orbán is central to this, because right now he controls the state and state resources. But after Sunday, you know, I think he’s actually going to be out of power, and then we’ll see.

AMY GOODMAN: Kim Lane Scheppele, I want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, specializing in the rise and fall of constitutional government with a focus on Hungary.

That does it for our show. Happy birthday to David Prude! And an early happy birthday to Anna Özbek, Diego Ramos and María Inés Taracena!

I’ll be at the IFC Center here in New York City this weekend, all through tonight and tomorrow morning at 10:30, as well as through the afternoon and evening, and Sunday, for the opening, the theatrical release, of Steal This Story, Please!, about the 30 years of Democracy Now! I’ll be there with the directors of the film, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, and many others. You can check it all out at democracynow.org. Democracy Now! currently accepting applications for jobs. I’m Amy Goodman.