President Donald Trump's ambassador to the EU denied in an AFP interview Thursday that the U.S. leader or his vice president were "meddling" in Hungary's election by endorsing nationalist incumbent Viktor Orban.
Speaking two days after Vice President JD Vance traveled to Budapest to stump with Orban, U.S. envoy Andrew Puzder noted that both Trump and his vice president had "been very vocal on their support" for the Hungarian prime minister.
Trump last month pledged his "complete and total" support for Orban's bid to secure a fifth term on Sunday.
But the ambassador pushed back at the charge that the visit by Vance — who railed against Brussels "bureaucrats" he accused of pushing for Orban's ouster — amounted to interference.
"I do not believe that what the vice president or the president did was meddling in the Hungarian election," Puzder said, adding of Vance: "I think he was careful not to be coercive, or make economic threats, or do the kinds of things that could be coercive."
The EU leader with the closest ties to both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban faces an unprecedented challenge to his 16-year rule in Sunday's vote.
His conservative rival Peter Magyar — well ahead in the polls with three days to go — warned ahead of Vance's visit against any U.S. attempt to tip the scales, while also pushing back at the narrative casting him as the candidate of Brussels.
"No foreign country may interfere in Hungarian elections," he wrote on X Tuesday, adding: "Hungarian history is not written in Washington, Moscow, or Brussels."
Trump's administration has embraced as part of its national security strategy the promotion of hard-right forces in Europe — casting migration and "woke" values as a "civilisational" threat to the Old Continent.
Pressed on why Washington has swung in so hard behind Orban when his conservative challenger Magyar espouses many of the same policy positions — particularly on Ukraine — Puzder suggested it came down to a tougher line on migration and "family values."
"I think on immigration, he's been very consistent that his position is much closer to the president's," he said of Orban.
Ultimately, Puzder said, Trump "feels that prime minister Orban is a good ally."
Orban's warm relationship with the United States — whose top diplomat Marco Rubio also visited in February to boost his reelection bid — stands in stark contrast to his fraught relations with EU partners.
Since coming to power, the Hungarian nationalist has increasingly locked horns with Brussels, which accuses him of quashing dissent and eroding the rule of law, and has frozen billions of euros in funding.
The closest ally in the bloc to Putin's Russia, Orban has defied consensus on Ukraine, stymying sanctions and blocking billions of euros in aid for Kyiv's war effort.
Raising the stakes in the run-up to Sunday's vote, the European Commission demanded an explanation from Hungary Thursday over media reports it had been feeding Moscow "direct-line" access to strategic EU information.