Comment by somenameforme

The Romania stuff is a complete farse. The campaign for Georgescu wasn't funded by Russia. It was funded by a member of the same ruling coalition whose judges cancelled the vote. [1] They launched a PR campaign that horribly backfired as they were skirting bounds of campaign law, so they couldn't actively name a candidate. The influencers followed their script, but didn't exactly have the same candidate in mind. It's like an equal but opposite of Bud Light hiring Dylan Mulvaney for PR.

Imagine in Hungary if a sort of pro-establishment (NATO/EU/Ukraine/etc) type won, and then they cancelled the election, banned this candidate, and reran it after making some mostly unprovable (and ultimately false) claims of foreign meddling. Can you imagine how you would feel about this? Can you imagine how the unelected EU bureaucrats would act, or what they would be calling it? For people on the other side of the political aisle, you just had an act carried out that would more than justify all the rather hyperbolic rhetoric you're using about the US. And when it's reality, and not just rhetoric, this ends up shaping the views of people for decades.

[1] - https://www.politico.eu/article/investigation-ties-romanian-...