A historian put Vice President JD Vance on blast for cozying up to authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
While President Donald Trump threatened to kill off the Iranian population, a threat which was walked back at the last minute as the U.S. and Iran came to a ceasefire agreement of sorts, the vice president took the time to travel to Budapest to campaign for Orbán.
He participated in a MAGA-esque rally to hype up Orbán as he faces re-election on Sunday, in what is expected to be an uphill battle for the far-right leader.
While speaking on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, historian Douglas Brinkley was quick to point out that Orbán is essentially a puppet of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Co-host Jonathan Lemire asked Brinkley: “Can you think of another moment where a sitting president or vice president would openly campaign for a foreign head of state, particularly one who…is firmly in the pocket of Vladimir Putin?”
“It’s utterly nutty,” Brinkley replied.
“The F-grade goes to NATO, the failing of NATO, meaning Donald Trump’s failure to keep NATO engaged. NATO doesn’t want to be engaged with war crimes either,” he continued. “And we forget that our foreign policy has to have NATO at its center.”
Orbán, the MAGA darling of Europe, became notable within the American right after Tucker Carlson propped him up in 2021.
During the rally, Vance called Orbán “one of the only true statesmen in Europe.”
Orbán, who has clamped down on press freedoms in Hungary and consolidated power as he dismantled many checks within the government, has also looked to redefine his country’s relationship with NATO. It’s similar to Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to pull the U.S. out of the strategic alliance.
Brinkley said, “The disrespect and the disassembling of NATO under the Trump/Vance regime is disheartening, to say the least, because we’re losing, squandering soft power all over the world.”
“We’re seeing the great alliance that’s been with us, Truman, through Biden, just starting to wobble, almost crumble. And you can’t expect our NATO allies to trust what President Trump says because he does a 180 the next day and he’s ruling as if he’s not really part of an alliance writ large,” he continued.
The Daily Beast reached out to the White House and the vice president’s office for comment.
During the rally, Vance was highly critical of what he referred to as European Union “bureaucrats,” who had “tried to destroy the Hungarian economy” because “they hate this guy.”
“Will you stand for sovereignty and democracy, for truth and for the God of our forefathers?” Vance asked the Hungarian voters. “Then, my friends, go to the polls this weekend, stand with Viktor Orbán, because he stands for you, and he stands for all these things.”
Vance also called Trump into the rally, and while Trump didn’t pick up the call the first time, he eventually connected to the crowd to say, “I love Hungary, and I love Viktor. I’m telling you he’s a fantastic man.”
