The US vice-president JD Vance has just repeatedly criticised allegedly unprecedented and “disgraceful” foreign interference in the Hungarian parliamentary election, while effectively strongly endorsing Viktor Orbán to win the vote on Sunday in what critics will no doubt see as his very own interference with the country’s electoral process.

Without skipping a bit, he smoothly moved from lambasting European “bureaucrats” for “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he has ever seen (14:09) and accusing them of trying to “destroy the economy of Hungary” to saying he is “here to help him in this election campaign” and that and he was expecting him to win the vote on Sunday (14:26).

Lavishing praise on the embattled prime minister, he argued that he sees in Orbán someone who “ferociously advocated” for his country, “stands up for the values of western civilisation” (14:04), and is generally right on all sorts of things from energy (14:01) to Ukraine (14:05, 14:15).

But it is the stark contradiction at the very heart of his criticism of “foreign interference” that will no doubt raise eyebrows elsewhere in Europe.

His repeated attacks on “Brussels” and Ukraine (14:19) – two of Orbán’s favourite enemies in this campaign – are likely to raise further alarm among other EU leaders as they need to figure out how to respond to this new crazy world of the US vice-president not-at-all-interfering-with-the-vote in an EU member state.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/apr/07/jd-vance-budapest-viktor-orban-hungary-election-france-nicolas-sarkozy-denmark-coalition-russia-ukraine-europe-latest-updates-news?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-69d4f8c58f088f86f872446c#block-69d4f8c58f088f86f872446c