During an appearance on MS NOW on Wednesday morning, noted historian Douglas Brinkley expressed surprise that Vice President JD Vance has chosen to ally himself so closely with Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán as he seeks re-election.
While the US was prepping for a massive escalation of the war in Iran, which was averted at the last moment after Pakistan brokered a two-week ceasefire that heavily favors Iran, Vance was taking part in a MAGA-style rally for the Hungarian prime minister who is fighting an uphill battle to hang on to his job.

Appearing with “Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire, Brinkley was quick to point out that Orbán is a high-profile puppet belonging to Vladimir Putin.
“Can you think of another moment where a sitting president or vice president would openly campaign for a foreign head of state, particularly one who we learned yet again today with Michael Weiss, terrific reporting a couple hours ago, is firmly in the pocket of Vladimir Putin?” Lemire pressed his guest.
"It's utterly nutty,” Brinkley quickly replied. “The F-grade goes to NATO, the failing of NATO, meaning Donald Trump's failure to keep NATO engaged. NATO doesn't want to be engaged with war crimes either. And we forget that our foreign policy has to have NATO at its center.”
“And the disrespect and the disassembling of NATO under the Trump/Vance regime is disheartening, to say the least, because we're losing, squandering soft power all over the world,” he added. “And we're seeing the great alliance that's been with us, Truman, through Biden, just starting to wobble, almost crumble. And you can't expect our NATO allies to trust what President Trump says because he does a 180 the next day and he's ruling as if he's he's not really part of an alliance writ large.”
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