by William Dixon and Maksym Beznosiuk
President Donald Trump and his followers are supporting Viktor Orbán’s re-election campaign in Hungary—even though Péter Magyar more closely embodies their vision of an ideal European leader.
On April 12, Hungarians will head to the polls for an election that has become a crucial test of a new geopolitical order. For Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán has been an invaluable strategic asset within the EU and NATO and the Russian leader has invested heavily in active measures to preserve him. For Brussels, a challenger is finally close to removing a 16-year thorn in the side of the European project.
For the Trump administration, Orbán is something more: a model for a Europe composed of sovereign, patriotic states resisting continental integration. From this viewpoint, Orbán is not merely an ally. His “illiberal democracy” is the model the MAGA movement wants to replicate across the continent, earning him high-profile election-season visits from both the Vice President and the Secretary of State—to the outrage of many European leaders.
The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy is explicit: nations should “put their interests first and guard their sovereignty.” The document warns of Europe’s “civilizational erasure” and calls for supporting leaders devoted to the “preservation and restoration of traditional European ways of life.”
Orbán is the perfect fit for this worldview. He presents himself as the defender of Christian Europe against progressive secularism, aligning with MAGA’s emphasis on traditional values while obstructing Brussels at every turn. Critically, he also maintains open channels to Moscow, positioning himself as a potential mediator in President Donald Trump’s broader strategy of “strategic stability” with Russia.
The current US administration has backed Orbán’s model comprehensively. It has granted Hungary a one-year exemption from sanctions on Russian oil and positioned Budapest as a venue for US-Russia negotiations. For right-wing Americans, Orbán is simultaneously a cultural conservative, an EU disruptor and a bridge to Moscow.
In reality, however, Washington is backing a national leader whose leverage comes less from Hungarian strength than from his ability to obstruct Europe from within. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hungary imported 61 percent of its crude oil from Russia. Today, that figure stands at 93 percent, among the highest dependency rates in Europe. Orbán presides over an economy that has descended into near-kleptocracy, ranking as Europe’s worst performer in world corruption indices. The prime minister’s veto power, the tool he uses to fragment Europe, serves Russian rather than Hungarian interests. Orbán has repeatedly delayed or diluted efforts on Russia and obstructed Ukraine’s path toward closer convergence with the EU, including the recent decision to veto Brussels’ €90 billion ($105 billion) loan to Ukraine. These are not effective acts of Hungarian sovereignty, but policies openly aligned with the Kremlin.
Ironically, in their fawning over Orbán, many within the MAGA movement have missed a critical truth: Péter Magyar, Orbán’s most serious rival in Hungary’s upcoming parliamentary elections, represents the version of national sovereignty Trump should actually want to champion.
Magyar’s conservative credentials are impeccable. He is neither a Brussels bureaucrat nor an EU federalist, but a center-right member of the European People’s Party Group—alongside leaders like Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Poland’s Donald Tusk, two of the continent’s leading proponents of rearmament and meeting NATO spending targets. Magyar himself is a former Fidesz insider, a “critical” pro-European and conservative nationalist rather than a progressive internationalist. He is succeeding where other, more liberal Hungarians have failed because he competes on the same terrain Orbán does: anti-establishment and populist. In short, Magyar has emerged as Orbán’s most serious challenger by turning the language of nationalism, corruption and sovereignty against his political record.
Magyar’s rise reflects genuine domestic grievances. Hungary’s economy has stagnated, inflation remains well above target and its GDP per capita ranks well below that of most of the 2004 accession states, including Poland, Romania and nearly all the Baltics. Hungary’s endemic Fidesz-fueled corruption has eaten away at growth and its inability to access EU funding has made its financial challenges worse. Magyar has argued that normalizing relations with the EU and thereby unfreezing billions in frozen funds, is key to pulling Hungary out of its downward economic spiral.
Hungarians are not choosing Magyar because he is pro-Brussels, but because Orbán’s “sovereignty” has produced kleptocracy, economic stagnation and international isolation. Magyar is offering a path to recovery: breaking Russian energy dependency, unlocking EU investment, rebuilding the Polish alliance and restoring Hungary’s position as a capable European player rather than a captured asset. This is populism directed at actual reform, not obstruction.
Magyar’s foreign policy instincts are rooted in Hungarian interests. He has expressed a desire to rebuild the Visegrád Four, the alliance of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, historically bound together by shared Christian conservative traditions and shared interests in pragmatic cooperation on NATO integration and Western alignment. Orbán’s stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fractured this alliance, weakening a strong Central European voice on the continent. A Magyar victory would restore the possibility of a regional conservative bloc that is aligned to the values and interests the MAGA movement professes to champion.
If Orbán wins, Visegrad remains broken and Brussels’ only choice is to further accelerate the mechanisms it has developed to bypass previous rounds of Hungarian intransigence: from EU-wide decisions taken without unanimity to “emergency instruments” structured outside veto power. Paradoxically, an Orbán victory would strengthen EU centralization while accelerating the exclusion of nationalist sovereigntist models from Brussels’ decision-making. In short, Trump has laid a strategic trap for himself; by backing Orbán, he ensures that when Orbán eventually falls, Europe will have made it structurally more difficult for institutions to accommodate independent nationalist governments.
The result will be a more unified, more federal Brussels, one explicitly designed to lock out the “patriotic states” Trump claims to champion. A Magyar victory restores the possibility of nationalist alternatives operating within—rather than against—European structures.
Here lies the ultimate strategic miscalculation of MAGA policy. The Trump administration believes that keeping Europe weak and divided serves American power. In reality, it undermines the only partner capable of helping contain Russia, enabling Washington to truly pivot to the Pacific to constrain China. A strong, autonomous Europe is essential to US interests—not because Brussels succeeds at America’s expense, but because a capable Europe aligned with Washington multiplies American power globally. Orbán hinders this process; his use of the veto power fragments Western defense coordination, blocks Europe’s energy decoupling from Russia and weakens the security compact with Kyiv.
An Orbán victory will not turn back the clock to a Medieval Europe of competing Christian kingdoms. Brussels, reeling from geopolitical shock after shock, will finally work to remove the abuse of the national veto to enable the strategic autonomy that US bellicosity is now making a matter of geopolitical survival. Orbán and others in his mould, will accelerate to make the European Union independent of any sovereign member state’s capacity to constrain it. Trump’s strategy to keep Europe fragmented and dependent might produce the opposite result: a Brussels that is more unified, capable and hostile to the United States.
Magyar offers a compelling alternative: a Europe that grows stronger with Washington, not against it; a Hungary that breaks from Russian leverage; and a rejuvenated Visegrád Four capable of strengthening NATO’s eastern flank. A Europe unburdened by Hungarian obstruction can coordinate on Ukraine, energy independence and Indo-Pacific strategy alongside the United States. Hungary is choosing between a leader who weakens Europe in service to Moscow and one who strengthens Europe in partnership with the West. President Trump is hoping for the former. He would be better served by the latter.
Mr.BadGuy
Publisher
Mr.BadGuy
Publisher
These soldiers are from a country whose president is a Jew Zelensky. Orthodox churches are also being destroyed in this country. Synagogues are not touched. Surprisingly, it turns out that Jews get along well with the Bandera Nazis.