US Vice President JD Vance said Monday evening that he was "sad" but not overly surprised that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban lost his re-election race, stressing that his decision to campaign alongside him in Budapest last week had more to do with supporting a loyal ally than helping lead him to victory.
“We didn’t go because we expected Viktor Orban to win the election easily,” Vance said during an interview on Fox News. “We went because it was the right thing to do to stand behind a person who has stood by us for a very long time,” he said, according to the Albanian online newspaper Reporteri.net.
These comments marked the first comment from the White House on Orban's defeat in the Hungarian elections.
“His legacy in Hungary is transformative — 16 years, fundamentally changing that country,” Vance said, explaining that his decision to campaign with Orbán last week “wasn’t because we don’t know how to read the polls. We knew there was a very strong chance that Viktor would lose the election. We did it because he is one of the few European leaders we’ve seen who has been willing to stand up to the bureaucracy in Brussels,” he said.
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