Rob Schmitz

But the next day I went about 60 miles or so east of Budapest in a much poorer area, which is mostly Orban country.

This is Fidesz country, the party that Orban represents.

And I was in a small town.

I spoke to a lot of Fidesz voters.

And overall, I mean people were watching it.

They were watching it on television.

It was running all on the state networks here in Hungary.

And they were very excited about it.

I mean I think to a certain extent, I think folks would have been much more excited had President Trump himself come to Hungary to support Orban.

But I didn't get the sense that it was that watered down, a lot of their enthusiasm.

One man told me that he was just so excited about Vice President Vance.

He said, oh, this will definitely be the next president, and he's so amazing, and he said so many great things, and he's supporting our Victor Orban, and thank God.

So there was a lot of enthusiasm about it.

But it's hard to tell whether or not these are folks that –

These were definitely not swing voters.

They were going to vote Fidesz and for Viktor Orban anyway.

So it's hard to know whether I guess this very large category of swing voters, if this type of visit was enough to swing them back to Fidesz away from this more – I guess not really more liberal but a different candidate, Peter Magyar.

I think that's a tricky one because I think that for mega Republicans and for all of the infrastructure that makes up that network of people, including think tanks and such, I think that Hungary is a place to look at for them if they're interested in consolidating the media.

if they're interested in tweaking the judiciary, if they're interested in tweaking electoral policies inside the United States, because these are all things that Viktor Orban has had success in doing.

But there's also this caricature, I think, of Hungary among this group, among the mega group, that