Trump
turns totally toxic for Europe’s far right
“Proximity
with the United States in the current context did not go down well with
Hungarian voters,” said a senior official from France’s National Rally party.
April 17,
2026 4:00 am CET
By Clea
Caulcutt and Nette Nöstlinger
PARIS — Donald Trump has become so politically
toxic in Europe that even his closest ideological allies increasingly view him
as a liability.
“We need
to keep our distance,” France’s Marine Le Pen told her fellow far-right
National Rally lawmakers at a meeting Tuesday, according to a senior party
official in attendance.
Europe’s
right-wing populists had been pulling away from the U.S. president even before
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán suffered a bruising loss in Sunday’s
parliamentary election. The contest had featured multiple endorsements from
Trump and a visit in the final days by U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
Orbán’s
defeat, combined with the fallout from the war in Iran and Trump’s fight with
the pope, has accelerated their retreat.
While
some see advantages in keeping ties with Trump, “in the specific context of
elections, that’s not a particularly promising approach,” said Torben Braga, a
lawmaker with the far-right Alternative for Germany party, who sits on the
foreign policy committee of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament.
For
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo were a
breaking point. But siding with the Holy Father was also a matter of political
convenience for her given her Catholic support base and the fact Europeans from
Bologna to Budapest are blaming the U.S. president for the conflict in the
Middle East and the rising cost of energy.
“[Orbán’s]
defeat can’t just be put down to voter fatigue,” said the senior National Rally
figure who, like others cited in this article, was granted anonymity to share
details of private conversations. “The proximity with the United States in the
current context did not go down well with Hungarian voters.”
To put
itself in the best position to win next year’s French presidential election,
the National Rally will likely try to avoid being seen as close to the Trump
administration.
Across
the Rhine, lawmakers from the AfD are taking a similar approach with crucial
regional elections looming in September.
Matthias
Moosdorf, an AfD member of parliament, said on X that the “ostentatious display
of friendship” between Budapest and the Trump administration, including Vance’s
decision to stump for Orbán, “hung like millstones around [the Hungarian
leader’s] neck.”
MAGA
going global
When
Trump returned to the White House last year, it appeared he could turbocharge
like-minded anti-immigration populist movements elsewhere that had struggled to
gain power or respectability.
The Trump
administration even formalized its efforts to cultivate an international
network of ideological allies as part of its national security strategy.
The AfD
initially saw Trump’s backing as an opportunity to cultivate legitimacy and
increase pressure on Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives to do away with
Germany’s “firewall”, an informal barrier that has been in place since the end
of World War II to prevent the far right from governing.
AfD
leader Alice Weidel has continued to try to keep the Trump administration on
good terms with her party, telling reporters she doesn’t see close ties to
Trump as a burden and that she believes “Orbán ran a very good campaign.”
Le Pen’s
National Rally has been more skeptical, given Trump’s unpopularity among the
French electorate and with the far-right party’s own voters.
“Ever
since the Capitol attack [in 2021 following Trump’s 2020 election loss], Marine
Le Pen realized that it’s not a good idea to get too close to him. She’s very
cautious, and kept her distance,” said a former official from a rival far-right
group.
Close
ties with Washington “can be a liability and be misinterpreted,” echoed one of
Le Pen’s close allies. “We like our friends in Washington, but we don’t want
them to tell us what to do.”
That’s
not to say Le Pen hasn’t embraced the administration when it was convenient.
Louis Aliot, the mayor of Perpignan, represented the National Rally at the
memorial for assassinated right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk last year. And Le
Pen and party President Jordan Bardella were among the various French political
leaders who accepted invitations to meet U.S. Ambassador to France Charles
Kushner.
The
National Rally senior official quoted above said the meeting with Kushner
“shows we are capable of talking to the world’s great players.”
Orbán’s
legacy
The
U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has precipitated a reckoning among Trump’s
ideological allies, with the AfD’s leadership increasingly distancing itself
from his U.S. administration.
But
there’s plenty left of Orbán’s legacy that the far right can carry on.
Orbán
provided the template for the populist agenda in Europe: a confrontational
attitude to EU institutions, and attacks on rule of law and on the media
landscape. Many nationalist parties across the bloc have embraced such tactics
at home.
Those
positions didn’t necessarily cost Orbán the election; many far-right
policymakers attribute Péter Magyar’s victory to his focus on corruption and
bread-and-butter issues.
Given
that hostility toward Brussels didn’t make or break the contest, Orbán’s defeat
won’t mean “the end of the fight” against the European Commission, said Le
Pen’s close ally quoted above.
“We need
a big country to lead the revolt,” the ally said. “If we win in 2027, other
countries will follow.”
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