Old Frenemies Gather Over Goulash and Memories

If you expected these former political rivals to maintain old grudges, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

“I don’t have many guy friends,” shrugs former Vice President JD Vance. “That’s something I talk about in my latest book, Are You There, God? It’s Me, JD. And for a long time I didn’t consider Marco, like, an ally.”

Marco Rubio looks serious for a moment, then breaks into a wide smile. “That’s because I hated your guts, bro! But now I couldn’t love you any harder.”

The two old frenemies share their trademark “dap” — a complicated combination handshake, clasp, and high-five. It goes wrong and Vance ends up poking himself in the eye, leading to guffaws from the other side of the table. The two men have the relaxed relationship that was missing when they were both vying for the nomination of the now-defunct Republican Party.

“You get caught up in the drama,” says Rubio. “You start to see a guy as an enemy, when the truth is he’s just as scared and messed up and traumatized as you are.”

Vance concurs: “That’s a big part of the healing work we do in our webinars and weekend retreats with former administration personnel. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be angry. But it’s not okay to turn someone else into the Other. We were all just trying to get through the day.”

[Photos, clockwise from top: former Vice President JD Vance and former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio toast former Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán, owner of Viktor’s Paprikash in Adams Morgan; Vance holds up a photograph of himself circa 2026: “A lot of what drove me back then was a feeling that I wasn’t looksmaxxing with the right intensity. Marco was always mogging me and that made me feel less than”; Rubio admiring Vance’s new jawline and neck tuck; Vance holding up La Medalla Nacional de la Libertad, el Coraje y la Valentía de la Recién Liberada Nación de Cuba, awarded to him by Marco Rubio, who served as the leader of the newly formed Free Cuba Nation from January 2027 until April 2027 until its annexation by Denmark; Rubio and Vance tuck into Orbán’s famous “deconstructed goulash for two”; FaceTiming with Eric and Donald Trump Jr. from an undisclosed non-extradition-treaty location; end of the evening bro-hugs.]

“This was always my dream,” restaurateur and impresario of Viktor’s Paprikash, former Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán says. “To feed people, to watch them eat the dishes my grandmother made, this is the true Hungarian way. And these boys,” he gestures to Vance and Rubio, now engaged in a thumb war, “they’re like my sons.”

Orbán came to this country a few months after his humiliating 2026 electoral defeat and the subsequent arrival in Budapest from Florida of hundreds of pardoned January 6 protesters, who attempted to storm the Hungarian Parliament building. “It was just, you know, time to go,” says Orbán, “start a new chapter.”

Two specters loom over this otherwise happy reunion. Their former boss, who left office with a statistically improbable 0.003 percent approval rating, remains in silent seclusion as a novitiate in the Order of Saint Egidio, a Roman Catholic monastery outside Shreveport, La. “Did not see that coming,” Vance admits. “Me neither,” chimed in Rubio. “But I’m sure it’s, you know, real and everything,” says Vance as Rubio nods in agreement. “After that meeting with the pope just before the midterms,” Rubio says, “he just wasn’t the same guy.” A quiet moment passes between Rubio and Vance, broken by Orbán, who plays Hungarian folk songs on the violin to entertain his customers.

The other, darker shadow across the table: the still missing, still at-large former Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who disappeared shortly after the 2028 elections and is rumored to be living somewhere in the jungles of Southeast Asia, surrounded by a personal army of devoted followers. “Yeah,” says Rubio, “the thing is, they’re saying that Hegseth is now operating without any decent restraint. They’re going to have to send someone in to terminate his command, probably with extreme — ”

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