For a man purportedly “leading” fevered last-minute negotiations with Iran to solve the catastrophe that his boss has created in the Middle East, Vice President JD Vance picked an odd moment to make a 48-hour detour to Budapest.
The White House claims he has traveled to the Hungarian capital to “hold bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán” and “deliver remarks on the rich partnership between the United States and Hungary”. But in reality, he is engaged in direct American interference in this weekend’s Hungarian election. It is aimed not just at salvaging Orbán’s beleaguered campaign to remain in office. But it is also reviving about Vance’s own flagging prospects of succeeding Donald Trump on the Republican Party’s presidential ticket in 2028.
Should they compare notes, Vance and Orbán might wonder which of them has endured more of a drubbing in recent weeks. The Hungarian strongman may be on the eve of a humiliating defeat that his opponents across Europe will gleefully herald as the beginning of the end of the far-right’s march across the continent.
But for Vance, the stakes are even higher. After promising “Make America Great Again” loyalists that the last thing Trump would ever consider doing in the White House would be declaring war on Iran, the President’s decision to ignite the conflict six weeks ago firmly pulled the rug out from beneath his deputy.
During the 2024 election, Vance not only believed Trump’s professed determination to avoid sparking any more “forever wars” that entangled US troops in far-off lands about which American voters profess little interest, but he also trumpeted and amplified the pledge.
In an October 2024 campaign appearance on The Tim Dillon Show, Vance told the comedian podcaster that war with Iran would be a “huge distraction of resources…massively expensive to our country”. He went to far as to counsel that “our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war” with the ayatollahs. In a subsequent interview, he claimed conflict between Israel and Iran was “the most likely and dangerous scenario” for provoking the Third World War.
Vance’s gamble that the President was serious about avoiding US military conflicts oceans away from American soil has spectacularly blown up in his face. His initial, brief efforts to talk Trump out of the war soon gave way to grudging acceptance that his boss would not be swayed.
“Go big and go fast,” the Vice President reportedly urged his leader. Now, with US forces being drawn into a potential Iranian quagmire, the only route left open to Vance may soon be to claim that Trump just didn’t go “big” or “fast” enough.
That position is unlikely to sit well with voters who, in growing numbers, oppose the war, and there is already evidence to suggest that support for Vance is cratering among the “Make America Great Again” faithful.
Last week, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting in Dallas, it was Secretary of State Marco Rubio who made all the running in the potential leadership stakes. In a straw poll of CPAC delegates, Rubio steamed into second place with 35 per cent of the vote, up from a paltry 3 per cent just 12 months earlier. Vance still came out on top with 53 per cent of the vote, but Rubio’s momentum will have proved deeply unnerving.
Vance knows he is on the back foot, has been humiliated by Trump, and has limited time available to turn things around. Last November, confident in the future, he told Fox News that he would “sit down” with Trump to discuss 2028 after this November’s midterm elections. But now, with evidence growing that Trump is leading his fellow Republicans to electoral disaster, a Christmas-time conversation seems like it may come all-too-late.
Today, Vance is betting big on Orbán, hoping that simply by showing up in Budapest and urging voters to get behind the Prime Minister’s troubled re-election campaign, his force of personality can drag the bullying bruiser of Hungarian politics over the finishing line.
But if Orbán loses on Sunday, Vance loses too. He so urgently wants to be a winner, even planning the release of a second autobiography (the clearest signal yet that he’s positioning himself for a 2028 run). But Trump has already up-ended him, and the President’s Hungarian protégé may be about to follow suit.
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