The Media Research Center wasn’t the only ConWeb entity to hype far-right candidates in a presidential election in Romania. John Gizzi wrote in a May 17 Newsmax column:
With hours to go before Romanians go to the polls to choose a new president, all signs point to a race that will go down to the proverbial wire — and whose outcome will inarguably have a big impact on the European Union and the U.S.
According to a final AtlasIntel poll, centrist Nicusor Dan, mayor of Bucharest, has a wafer-thin edge (48.7 to 47.7 percent) in the runoff with George Simion — leader of the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) Party and top vote-getter in the initial balloting May 4.
The contest Sunday was brought about when the Romanian Supreme Court last year stunned the world by canceling the first election in which the top vote-getter was nationalist newcomer Calin Georgescu. The cancellation last year had the connivance of the European Commission and was based on still-murky evidence that Georgescu received illegal funding from Russia.
The court decision was condemned by the MAGA movement in the U.S., with both Elon Musk and JD Vance saying the cancellation of the election was a sign of ailing democracy in Romania.
Given that the MAGA movement effectively endorsed the Capitol riot, their word doesn’t really mean much. Also note that Gizzi describes both Simion and Georgescu as “nationalists,” not the far-right activists they are, though he does identify some of Simion’s far-right policies without labeling them as such:
A “President Simion” would clearly be skeptical of assisting Ukraine in its war with Russia — just like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who has endorsed his fellow nationalist, a critic of the European Union and NATO.
Long dubbed the “Donald Trump of Romania,” Simion vows to “Make Romania Great Again” — in Romanian terms, an obvious reference to his platform plank vowing to annex territories in neighboring Moldova that are inhabited by Romanians. Simion’s positions on Moldova and Ukraine have led both countries to deny him a visa on the grounds he is violating their sovereignty.
Much like HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Simion is a vigorous opponent of vaccines.
Gizzi made sure to add that Simion “strongly denied he is pro-Russian,” though that’s pretty much what he is if he’s anti-Ukraine.
Simion ended up losing the election to Dan, but Gizzi hasn’t done a column about that.