Trump likes to back winners in foreign elections. The upcoming vote in Hungary will test his clout

President Donald Trump, right, meets with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Nov. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) 2026-04-11T04:06:46Z WASHINGTON (AP) — In Hungary, President Donald Trump and his top officials used social media and an election-eve trip to Budapest to promote the country’s far-right prime minister in his reelection campaign. In Argentina, the U.S. administration worked to prop up the country’s financial markets to the tune of $20 billion -- then Trump threatened to pull the assistance if its elections didn’t go his preferred way. And in Honduras, he backed a conservative former mayor for president — and pardoned a predecessor from the same political party as Hondurans were preparing to vote. In his second term, Trump has made a public flex of his political influence abroad on a scale that few if any U.S. presidents have exerted, trying to marshal power that he’s used domestically to sway races in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe. Using endorsements to reward loyal and like-minded leaders, he has shattered a U.S. tradition of avoiding overt involvement in the internal politics of other countries, and made the use of some foreign policy tools more about politics than about advancing U.S. interests, according to his critics. “The impact of that is to really cheapen a relationship,” said David Pressman, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary during the Biden administration. Pressman, who was on the ground in Budapest as Orban publicly backed Trump in 2024, said Hungarian positions on key issues such as Ukraine felt “infused through a political U.S. rubric,” rather than articulated as sovereign foreign policy. The most significant test yet of Trump’s political power abroad may come Sunday, when voters in Hungary render a verdict on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s bid for a fifth term. Orbán was the first European leader to back Trump during his 2016 run and remained a close ally even during Trump’s period of political exile, making sojourns to see him in south Florida and again endorsing the Republican in his 2024 comeback race. “I love Hungary and I love that Viktor,” Trump said this week as Vice President JD Vance, visiting Budapest, put him on speakerphone at a rally with more than 1,000 Orbán supporters. (