Senate

McConnell chides ‘some’ on right over failed campaigning for Orban in Hungary

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by Max Rego - 04/13/26 6:45 PM ET

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by Max Rego - 04/13/26 6:45 PM ET

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Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) denounced conservatives who advocated for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán before his party lost parliamentary elections on Sunday.

In a Fox News opinion piece published on Monday, McConnell wrote that U.S. politicians “have traditionally abided by the idea that politics stopped at the water’s edge” and “sought to avoid even the appearance of telling other sovereign democracies how to run their internal affairs and resisted the urge to treat foreign policy as an extension of our domestic politics.”

However, he noted that “for the better part of a decade,” Hungarian politics “has persisted as an object of intense fascination” for conservatives stateside.

“This phenomenon is endlessly puzzling,” the former Senate GOP leader continued. “America’s self-proclaimed national conservatives spoke of Orban’s Hungary as an oasis of traditionalism amid the wasteland of an ailing, liberal and decadent postmodern Europe. And some American politicians appear to have bought into the myth.

“To be clear, it is a myth. Orban’s champions on this side of the Atlantic may well consider his illiberal court-packing, crony capitalism or restriction of free speech an acceptable price for their desired social utopia. Yet for all the talk of reviving faith and family through statist intervention, Hungary’s religious participation and birth rates under his rule have declined right alongside the rest of the West.”

Orbán, who has led Hungary since 2010, and his far-right Fidesz party lost Sunday’s elections to the center-right Tisza Party, led by Peter Magyar. The loss came after Vice President Vance campaigned for Orbán in Budapest last week, although McConnell did not mention Vance by name.

The Hill has reached out to the White House and Vance’s office for comment on McConnell’s piece.

The outgoing Hungarian leader and President Trump have been close allies for years, while Orbán has also stood out among European leaders in not backing Ukraine in the wake of Russia launching its full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

In his op-ed, McConnell noted Orbán’s “fealty to Moscow” and his ties to the Chinese and Iranian governments as proof that his policies do not “reflect American values.”

“Watching this from Kentucky, it is hard to understand how some on the American right thought that staking U.S. influence on the outcome of a parliamentary election in a small, central European country was putting America’s interests first,” he added. “To the extent that what happens in Hungary matters to America, it is a question of whether its actions on the world stage — not its social policies — align with America’s strategic interests.”

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