I'm John Bachelor. I welcome Joseph Sternberg, member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

He's in London. He writes political economics observing the continent of Europe as well as the

islands of Britain. However, we start with the vice president of the United States in a recent column,

Joseph observed before the election in Hungary that the vice president, Mr. Vance, who had

traveled to Budapest and rallied with the then premier Victor Orbán, was likely to be disappointed

with the results. This was before the election. I would say clearly the results did not leave Mr. Orban in power, though he'd

been there for 16 years. There's a new direction in Hungary. My question to you, Joe, is

the Vice President's disappointment. It's a puzzle to me because the polls were so clearly

lopsided before he arrived in Budapest in favor of the opposition that did win by a very

large margin. What is your thinking about why the vice president traveled there? There does not

seem to be an obvious advantage to this memory. Good evening to you. Hi, John. I think that there

has been a weird thing going on for a while between certain kinds of American conservatives and Hungary, and that really came to a head over the past few weeks when Hungary did have the election that Victor Orban ended up losing after he'd been in power for 16 years. So I think that what had been going on is the Orban during his tenure really positioned

himself as a champion of a certain kind of conservatism that was very hostile to immigration.

I mean, remember one of his big early moments on the global stage was when he resisted the tide

of illegal immigration that started sweeping over Europe

from the Middle East in 2015. That put him on a collision course with various other European leaders,

including the German chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel. And then, you know, I think that

his whole persona of a Christian nationalist leader who was trying to

restore European civilization, almost as if you were attempting some kind of Habsburg restoration,

I think some people found very appealing, this notion that you should govern very much on the

basis of Christian values. So should govern very much on the basis of Christian values.

So he was very much on the conservative side of a lot of cultural war issues, particularly

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