Hungary’s forthcoming election [ April 12] potentially offers a first test of the US government’s new commitment to assist like-minded politicians in Europe. Yet when it comes to gauging just how much help Orban might expect from Washington, the picture is confused(…)

Seeing how fruitless Orban’s visit to Washington in November was, I doubt that any meaningful material support would arrive from the US in the period before the election,” believes Zoltan Ranschburg a freelance political analyst based in Budapest. That said, he adds, “Trump is of course famously unpredictable.”(…)

Dr Garvan Walshe [research associate at the Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels] however, thinks that, depending on the outcome of April’s vote, the true significance of American support for Orban may only be felt after polling day rather than before it. In his view, “if there’s a disputed outcome, they [the Americans] are likely to either stand by Orban, or demand a huge and random price from others in exchange for making him stand down.”