US Vice President JD Vance holds a mobile phone while speaking on a microphone with US President Donald Trump while delivering remarks at a Friendship Day event in the presence of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at MTK Sportspark in Budapest, Hungary on April 7, 2026.
Jonathan Ernst | getty images
President Donald Trump praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Tuesday after Vice President J.D. Vance called on his boss from the stage of a political rally at a football stadium in Budapest.
“I like that Victor, I’ll tell you, he’s a fantastic guy, we’ve had a great relationship,” Trump said as Vance placed his phone’s speaker in front of the microphone on stage.
The efforts by Trump and Vance, who traveled to Hungary for the first time as a public official to promote Orbán’s candidacy, come as polls show the incumbent leader is poised to lose his upcoming election.
Orban, a conservative nationalist whose closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin during the war in Ukraine made him an oddity among European leaders, has long been a favorite of Trump.
“Remember this, he didn’t allow people to invade your country and destroy their countries like other people have,” Trump told the Hungarian crowd via speakerphone. “He’s kept your country good. He’s kept the Hungarian people in your country and he’s done a fantastic job.”
Trump, who has tightened up on immigration to the US, was apparently comparing Hungary’s strict immigration rules to those of its European neighbours.
Orbán and his Fidesz party have held power since 2010. But the latest polls show Tisza, the pro-European opposition party led by Peter Magyar, in the lead ahead of the next parliamentary elections on April 12.
Vance initially struggled to get Trump from the stage to the phone line, where he spoke after Orbán.
The first time he called, he got an automated voice saying, “I’m sorry, the person you’re trying to reach has a voicemail box that hasn’t been set up yet.”
“Okay, try one more time,” Vance said. “Good signal here,” he said, looking at his phone. Before Trump spoke, he said, “It’s ringing. Progress.”
Vance said he had not come to tell Hungarians how to vote, but later told them to “go to the polls” and “stand with Viktor Orbán, because he is standing for you.”
The pressure from US leaders to rally support for Orbán comes as Trump is threatening Iran with the destruction of its “entire civilization” unless a deal is reached by a deadline of 8 pm ET on Tuesday.