I never thought we’d see this that Dick Cheney is now much more popular, much more popular than JD Vance. Today we’re going to talk about the defeat of a MAGA favorite, Viktor Orban, in Hungary. And we got to talk about the Pope. So there’s a lot to cover. Let’s get into it. First up, the Hungarian election, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party got absolutely creamed. Michelle, you’ve been over there. You’ve been reporting from Hungary. You were there until just the last couple of days or so. What is Orban’s connection to Trump and MAGA, and why does this loss matter. Sure well, when Orban. So Orban was prime minister in the early 2000, then he was defeated. When he came back, he really set about creating what he called an illiberal democracy. And it was the template for a lot modern authoritarians all over the world, I think very much including Trump. And Vance himself has said that some of what Orban does should be a model for conservatives. Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, has said that Orban state isn’t a model, but the model for conservative statecraft. He had a two-thrids majority, which is what you need to rewrite the Constitution. So he rewrote the Constitution. One of the things he did was create these wildly gerrymandered districts that made it very, very difficult for the opposition. He created a network of foundations that he both was able to shut down the preeminent kind of liberal University in Budapest, and then set up his own kind of parallel right wing educational institutions. He took over most of the media, or forced the sale of media outlets to regime aligned oligarchs, which maybe will sound familiar to people in the United States. I gotta say, I’m having shades of Trump panic here. Well, yeah, I mean, and it’s really I mean, I think one of the things that’s striking about being there is that this was a process of 16 years. And if you look at of how much Donald Trump has done over less than two years, it’s kind of alarming. On the other hand, Hungary shows that even when this is very, very entrenched with enough of popular can overcome it. But Orban really held himself out as the model for a new regime, at a time when people felt like liberal democracy was exhausted. And he invested a lot of state money, a lot of Hungarian money into building out this network in other places. I mean, there’s a whole subculture in Budapest of these American expats working at state subsidized think tanks writing about of how heavenly it is to live in the Orban regime. And I was actually at an event at the Danube Institute, which is one of these think tanks, earlier in the week, and one of the speakers actually said, they were all kind of glum because they could see where things were going. And one of the speakers actually said, without the Hungarian taxpayer, we wouldn’t have this right wing infrastructure in Europe, which I thought was kind of a stunning admission. And I don’t know that the Hungarian taxpayer realized that they were subsidizing this New intellectual infrastructure. David, what are your thoughts. What hit you. It is difficult to understate how much for part of the Trump riot, Hungary was the model. This was the model. This was the wave of the future look, I would not ascribe that to Trump. I mean, from the beginning, I think of Trumpism as just the will to power of 1 man, Donald Trump. It’s not a coherent ideology, but a lot of people who want to have a coherent ideology of liberalism and authoritarianism have attached themselves to Trump. And I would say Orban was what you might call intellectual Trumpism. In other words, how do you create a worldview. How do you create a political philosophy around this concept of the strongman in a Western democracy in Orban was the model. He was the guy. Now, to me, I found all of this deeply confusing. I mean, I remember in the 80s and 90s having all these arguments with my liberal friends who were holding out Norway as the model of social democracy. And I’m like, guys, small Scandinavian countries are not one to one comparisons with the U.S. I was completely right, I just forgot. I didn’t know which region of Europe the small country was going to be the model for the U.S. Apparently it’s Central Europe and a small Central European country is the model. And it was important enough for the intellectual Trump right for JD Vance to go there, to actually essentially appear in a campaign rally to interfere blatantly, grotesquely in the election. And then after it’s over, after Orban loses, it was like, oh, but the right one anyway, because Magyar is conservative and is more conservative than the rest of the E.U. So no, we really didn’t lose this. He is a conservative politician by European definitions, or right wing politician by European definitions, but very fundamentally different in the approach to liberal democracy. And that was always the beef with Orban. It wasn’t so much that he was a right leaning politician. It was the illiberal authoritarianism. And that’s why he was. That’s why Trump is here at home, found him compelling. It wasn’t his right leaning ideology. It was his illiberal authoritarianism. And it’s the defeat of that illiberal authoritarianism that is really the big development out of Europe. I just want to say one quick thing about the comparison between Norway and Hungary. So I take your point that maybe you can’t kind of base, a model for American governance on these relatively small European countries. But I think the big difference is that Norway at least works on its own terms. Norway is an extreme, is a thriving, happy, rich, successful country, whereas even on the right’s own terms, Hungary has become one of the poorest countries in the E.U. It is the most corrupt on many measures. It is the birthrate. One of Orban’s big policies was that he was going to raise the birth rate. I mean, he hasn’t the birth rate is really, really low. I think it’s 1.31 or something like that. And so the model doesn’t even work on its own terms. I think it’s important. Which is another reason why I think that this has been such a blow, because I mean, think about this is not on the same scale, but think about American leftists grappling with the failure of communism and what it means when your God has failed. This is a much lesser God. But the failure is still, I think, going to create of intellectual crisis. So somebody talked to me about JD Vance’s role over there. It seems to me that it was extremely risky to send him. I mean, I get his fanboy tendencies with Hungary especially. He himself is a very enthusiastic natalist. I can see some of the appeal, but to send the vice president over there to wrap his arms around Orban on the eve of these elections and then have such a spectacular belly flop. What was, what do you make of this little adventure. And what happens now in terms of where it takes the post liberal right in the U.S. and what it does for that movement. David go first. Can I call this the Strait of Hormuz of electoral interventions. Please do. I love that. So one of the things that has happened is that you have seen MAGA take this view where they don’t believe bad news now or bad polls or negative reports. It’s all fake. It’s all fake. It’s all fake. And so now, look, I mean, there’s a good reason why, for example, there’s some skepticism towards polls, and all three of Trump’s presidential elections, he outperformed his polling. But this would have been outperforming by orders of magnitude greater. But what we have seen is a consistent pattern with the administration just overreaches and overreaches and overreaches. There’s this underlying hubris that they can bend the world to their will. And it’s interesting, Michelle, I honestly think that. What was the political project of urbanism? If you were going to hear the right, it really wasn’t to turn Hungary into a thriving democracy. The political project was the authoritarianism, was sustainable authoritarianism that was the political project. Because for years, when I was writing against this Hungarian experiment in conservative media and I was comparing Hungary to all kinds of other countries on exactly those metrics, Michelle. Birthrate, economic prosperity. I mean, the contrast between Poland and Hungary is just extreme. Here it’s a large contrast. But that was not what was motivating them here. It was not really. I’ve gone to Hungary because Hungary has shown how to make its citizens happier, healthier, and more prosperous. It was I’ve gone to Hungary because Orban has shown how to all over the world to deal with how to deal with the wokesters. And it’s the failure of that particular political enterprise, which was not really rooted in human flourishing and mutual and shared prosperity. It’s the failure of that particular enterprise and what they thought of as sustainable authoritarianism. That’s the real blow there. And can I say something that has been driving me crazy since the election. I think you’re hearing this over and over again. The New line is, well, the fact that he lost and there looks like there’s going to be a peaceful transition of power proves that he was never an authoritarian to begin with. I mean, I would point out that there was a peaceful transition after the fall of communism in 1989, and nobody says that proves that communism was never authoritarian. But also just I went to one of the last major rallies in this town, a few hours from Budapest in the Northeast, kind of a Fidesz stronghold and a town of like 16,000, pretty rundown, a lot of Soviet style architecture is still around, and there were well over 1,000 people turned out in this square, and Peter Magyar kept saying, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. And the people were chanting, we are not afraid. And so I asked a woman, what does he mean. Like what. What have you been afraid of. And she was an elementary school teacher. And she told me that in the past, she would have been afraid to show her support for the opposition, because she would have feared that she would lose her job and her ability to support her family. And it was only kind of seeing this tidal wave of people that made her think that there was of preference cascade. But you hear that kind of thing all the time. And what’s so frustrating is that on the one hand, it’s this kind of strong hand, to put it lightly, that the MAGA right admires. And now that it’s been rebuked, they want to pretend that it was never there to begin with. right. That’s part of the whole admit no defeat. That’s just kind of baked into that movement that nothing. Nothing is truly a defeat. But you mentioned Poland, Michelle, and you’ve reported from there where the far right law and Justice Party undermined Democratic norms for nearly a decade before it was kind of booted in 2023. So what have they done to rebuild that democracy. And is there a lesson or lessons for Hungary to pull from that. Well, in some ways, it was of similar election in that it was the center right, the center pro-European right, versus the far populist right. It’s actually, I think, much more difficult in Poland, even though the Law and Justice Party hadn’t become quite as entrenched because of the size of the victory in Hungary. So when I was in Poland, it Poland. It was just a few months after the election. And what the government was dealing with is, I think what we’re going to end up dealing with here too, which is that when you have all of these regime cronies kind of infiltrated all into the administration, into all of these institutions, it becomes very hard to remove them without reducing Democratic norms yourself. And so it’s this paradox of trying to bring back of reform, in Poland they had created these new judicial roles. They had done complicated things to shore up the judiciary. How do you undo that without exerting extrajudicial powers yourself. The difference in Hungary, and again, we don’t know how this is going to play out, but because Peter Magyar won what they call their constitutional majority, he won two-thirds. He can. His party is going to be able to revise the Hungarian Constitution. And so they have a much freer hand to undo what Orban has done. David, what does Peter Magyar what kind of challenges is he facing with this and ridding the country and cleansing it of this authoritarian bent that has been they took 16 years to get this project rolling. I think Michelle identified the problem very well, and it’s a version of the problem that we’re going to face the next time there is a non Trumpist or a Democratic administration. And that is if one of the violations of norms was purging the bureaucracy and replacing it with your own loyalists, is the correction to that purging the bureaucracy again. And have you essentially done created a pattern where unwilling in the desire to avoid something like the corrupt ideological spoils system you then push it to another level, because you have to try to cleanse the products of the corrupt ideological spoil system, which then the other side codes is just and understands is just a purge of my allies. And you realize how much one person who is breaking both legal and traditional moral norms around democracy, how much they can do a generation long amount of damage. So I want to be a little bit of a worrywart on this. You’re talking about what happens when we have moved beyond the Trump era, and how we get back to some Democratic norms. You’re saying that be wildly optimistic. We still have a few years. And so what lessons do we think that this administration and this president will take from what happened to Orban and what could we be looking at. Either one of you grab this. So I’m not sure that Trump is capable of learning these kind of lessons. I mean, you could argue that they would say, well, this requires that assertive, even greater level of repression because in the end, that’s what keeps me up. I hate to be Pollyanna ish about this country, because God knows, I feel a tremendous sense of despair and horror. But at the end of the day, the reason that I think Auburn didn’t try to steal the election, even though there was kind of weird dirty tricks kind of stuff in the run up to it. There was this kind of false flag accusation of Ukrainian sabotage. There were things that Auburn was doing that it looked like he might be tiptoeing up to some state of emergency. And we’ll never know how real that danger was. But I think part of the reason that they didn’t attempt anything like that was because the opposition was just so overwhelming. You could see it everywhere. They just couldn’t have I don’t think, gotten away with it. And I would say similarly, Donald Trump’s coalition, although he still has his hardcore base, you already see it falling apart. And a lot of the people who would have been, I think, in the past, cheerleaders for some of the most radical action that Donald Trump could take who would have been out there excusing or encouraging a Jan. 6 type thing. Those people have fallen off the wagon. Alex Jones is gone. Candace Owens is gone when you’ve lost Candace Owens. Tucker Carlson is wondering if Donald Trump is the Antichrist, which is maybe a conversation for another episode of this podcast, a whole episode on the but on the religious overtones. And so I don’t want to underestimate how much power Donald Trump still has. He has the military, but I think that the loss of a lot of his most powerful propagandists would just make it much, much harder, David, I think you’re already seeing the smarter folks in MAGA looking at Hungary, looking at the collapse in support, looking at the Iran War. I mean, the Iran war was a break point beyond the Epstein files, especially in the most hardcore elements of the MAGA because if you were on the other side of them in the 2024 election, all they ever would say to you, warmonger, you want to go to war with Iran. So for a segment of these people, it has been a bridge too far. But here’s where I want to introduce a thought to people’s minds. This part of MAGA that has broken with him has broken with him. Not because not necessarily because this was an unconstitutional war, although that was part of it because they’re furious at him. Because his foreign policy is distracting them from the real mission, which is the enemy within. And so, part of the frustration with MAGA is that Trump hasn’t concentrated enough on the left in suppressing the left in this country. It could be even if Trump loses and let’s just say Trump. Midterms Democrats sweep the next presidential election, Democrats win and return to power. Then the question is really going to be, is this populist reaction that is now drifting increasingly anti-Semitic, or is this just what the opposition party is going to be in America. Or would the defeat of that form of the opposition party result in a change in the opposition party. And that’s what we don’t know. So, I’m sitting here hoping that a defeat of the populist version of the Republican Party could mean at least a ghost of a chance. You have a revival of a classical liberal version of a Republican Party. But I could see it going the other way. And I feel like in Hungary, we’re getting a small European version of a dilemma we’re going to be facing. And Poland was interesting. One last one quick thing on Poland. I did this really fun and interesting interview with a Polish law professor, and she and a number of judges and other law professors had done a massive program on civic education in Poland, where they had done things go to local communities, judges and law professors and teach people what is the rule of law. What is constitutional law. It wasn’t vote for this person and not this person. It was a massive civic education program. And that has stuck with me ever since. One thing we absolutely need in this country is a massive civic education program so that people understand what it is that we’re about to lose here in this country. If the present trends continue towards Trumpist authoritarianism, can I say two quick, two quick things. When you talked about the judges. And I know what you mean about the judges in Poland, something not quite analogous, but something that I thought was really interesting in Hungary was what they called these Tisza circles. A Tisza. Again, forgive my pronunciation. It’s the name of Magyar’s party. It’s named after this Hungarian river. And there would be these circles in small towns of just people who would meet and organize and shore each other up, show people that they weren’t alone in their opposition. And I think that was very important, that kind of local infrastructure. The other thing I just want to say about the future of the Republican Party. I mean, my guess is that the future of the Republican Party is more nakedly anti-Semitic. And I say this as someone I think it’s always important to say this when you talk about criticism of Israel. I mean, I would like to see the United States foreign policy break with Israel. I would like to see Benjamin Netanyahu in The Hague. I mean, so I have this is not about thinking that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. However, I do think that there is now a lot of naked anti-Semitism in the Republican Party. And what I think you’ll see after World War I in Germany, there was the stab in the back theory, the Dolchstosslegende, the idea that it was the Jews that had caused them to be defeated. I think you’ll see something similar with MAGA especially because this war in Iran was so inexplicable and nobody could quite understand why Trump just kind of turned on a dime. And if there’s going to be A of obvious explanatory conspiracy theory. And so I would be very worried that we will look back on this period as the precursor to an even more fascist Republican Party. One of the things that I’m assuming is that the recovery of the Republican Party, and I do mean like recovering from this Trumpish fever, is going to depend on how thoroughly discredited the Trumpism is. And I think the Iran War is an important point in that. And so I feel that we should also point out that in addition to his field trip to Hungary, the vice president was sent to Pakistan to lead the highest level talks between the U.S. and Iran in nearly 50 years to ostensibly try and reach a deal, even though that seemed very unlikely. And it just struck me as Vance is completely opposed to this war. He stands by the president in public, but this is a violation part of the MAGA base that he has always vibed with. And it seems like this is like putting a nail, so to speak, in the coffin of his future within the movement. Now, obviously, there’s still a lot of time there’s overstating anything can happen. But it does feel like that’s an important schism. That’s, that’s going to speak to how discredited the movement winds up. And so how quickly the party can recover. Or maybe I’m just being too optimistic. Well, I mean, look, political eras do end parties do reform. So when it comes to when will this era end. I feel confident it will at some point. I just don’t know when and how much damage will be done before it does that. That’s very much an open question. And I do think in JD Vance’s failures, we’re beginning to see maybe how this political era ends, because the question has always been, who is getting the baton from Donald Trump. Who is the next standard bearer. And for a long time, it’s been JD Vance. JD Vance is the heir apparent, and he has been face planting time and time and time again. And I think one way to think of his phase as a leader of the Republican Party is that he’s got all of the toxicity of Trump, and none of that real charisma that Trump has. It’s a charisma I don’t fully understand. It’s never landed with me. Although I will say early on I did enjoy “The Apprentice,” but it has never really landed with me. This hold, this charisma that he has. But one thing I know is that JD Vance does not have it. He just doesn’t have it. No the man can’t order a donut without alienating people. right. I mean, to the point where we saw this poll where. And I never thought we’d see this that Dick Cheney is now much more popular. Much more popular than JD Vance. Just it feels like they keep throwing him under the bus Vance had barely made it back to the U.S. from his globetrotting when his boss picked a fight with Pope Leo. I mean, the pope. And let’s remember, can we just remember why we have Pope Leo. What happened to the last pope after JD Vance met with him? Oh I like that conspiracy theory. We’re floating back to that. Michelle. O.K moving along from Michelle’s dark view of JD Vance. I’m sorry. That was a joke. Supernatural powers Vance is the highest ranking Catholic in U.S. politics, and his basic response was the pope should stay out of it. This feud with the pope has not played well among a lot of conservative Catholics. He is not. Pope Leo is not as unpopular with conservative Catholics as his predecessor. A lot of them are very pleased with him. David, what’s going on. What’s going on here. What’s the pope up to. What do you make of Vance’s response. Boy, this is fascinating because it’s interesting. MAGA will say, well, this pope is going after Donald Trump. Well, I’m old enough to remember when John Paul II, who was conservatives love John Paul II, when he was very much against the Iraq war in 2003. So it is not the case that pope’s quote, stay in their lane or however you want to say it. Popes have been talking about war and peace forever. It’s what they do. They talk about that along with the treatment of migrants. They’ve been doing that forever. They talk about it along with Catholic social teaching when it comes to public policy. I mean, this is something that’s been going on for a long time in a role that the church should play. O.K, so if going back to Martin Luther King and I might I’m paraphrasing this quote, but the quote is in essence that the church is not the master of the state. The church is not the servant of the state. The church is the conscience of the state. And so it’s not that the church runs the country or the church serves the country. It has an entirely separate meaning and purpose and relationship to a country. And that is to provide a moral argument, a moral argument about what a country is. And now, of course, that’s not the sum total job of the church. But when in the church state relations context. So the pope is doing exactly what popes have done. Popes, in my view, should do. But this Trump is stumped by people who do not bend to his bullying and to his will. And so it was only a matter of time before he was going to do this. I mean, this was I felt this has been inevitable for a while, that there was going to be a direct attack on the pope and that it was not going to phase the pope. The pope was not going to be intimidated by that because there are two very different people. Why should he be right there, working on two very different institutions, two very different time horizons. I mean, it’s so absurd, this attack on the pope. And Trump is giving his own people off ramp after off ramp after off ramp lately. David, can I ask you a question because I think you can’t talk about this fight with the pope without also talking about that extremely blasphemous image of Jesus picture of Donald Trump as a doctor Yeah you mean the doctor. The doctor. My doctor looks just like that. But yes of Donald Trump of a Christ like Donald Trump healing someone with both kind of patriotic paraphernalia, but also a demon figure in the background. But I’m curious because I saw people online, including evangelicals suddenly saying people who had supported Trump suddenly saying, wait, he is the Antichrist. But I’m curious to know a lot of I think, evangelicals who are still very much on board with Trump. And I’m curious, is this just a thing they can just dismiss as Trump being Trump. Or is this causing some genuine qualms? Well, let me put it this way. It has, in a small slice of people, caused genuine qualms. It’s a chip away moment, but it’s more than that. This is wider scale frustration from people whom I’ve never seen critique Trump. In other words, people who have been with him, who have always had the most rationalizing, justification, justifying kind of explanation. And this was a bridge too far. And the way they’ve cast it is, well, I can disagree with him on some things or he just made a mistake very similar to remember when he put out the video that had the monkey image. There was some consternation and then it was, oh, he made a mistake. And here you’re seeing more consternation, but less willingness to say, oh, he just made a mistake. Man, I’m a lapsed evangelical. And even I was like, damn, brother, I don’t believe I’d have done that. Well, I can tell you’re a lapsed evangelical, Michelle. When your response was, damn, brother. I’m just saying. So I feel that was a pretty magical move on his part. And I would like us to leave it there, just with that image of Trump as Jesus looming over all of us. It seems like a pretty good spot to leave this and pivot to something more uplifting, dare I say. I want to wrap this thing up, as we always do with recommendations. What are y’all watching or reading or otherwise enjoying this week. Michelle you go first. Guess goes first. O.K, so I am so I’m going to recommend a novel that actually came out a couple of months ago, but I don’t think it’s gotten as much attention as it deserves. It’s a novel called “Good People” by Patmeena Sabit. Have either of you heard of it. So good. So that shows me that it has not gotten the attention that it deserves. It’s this really wonderful and riveting novel about a very assimilated Afghan family where the daughter dies, and there’s a question of whether or not she was the victim of an honor killing. And so it feels like, I mean, it has the pace and momentum of like a murder mystery. But it’s one of these novels written with many different voices. And it has this kind of polyphonic quality. It’s such a fascinating book about both assimilation and the limits of assimilation. It makes you feel. I think I would say that this fear of losing face is not one that I typically can sympathize with but it makes you feel the weight of that. And it also is constantly making you revise what you think is happening. At one moment you’ll think, oh, this really is this abusive medieval family. And then you’ll think, wait, how much. How different is this really from a strict parent grounding their daughter. It’s so moving but also just really riveting. It was one of those books that kind of ruins your next day because you’re up late reading it. O.K, David. So I’m cheating a little bit here because I know what you’re going to say, Michelle, and I’m counter-programming you just right off the bat. So whatever Michelle is about to tell you, don’t listen to her. Watch this instead. It’s season two of “Your Friends & Neighbors” just came out. This is the Jon Hamm show. Olivia Munn, Amanda Peet. And now this season, James Marsden, who’s just tremendous. And it’s about a rich guy who steals nice things from rich people. It’s a good way of putting it. He falls on hard times, loses his hedge fund job, and decides to make ends meet by stealing all the extra stuff that his neighbors in this extremely exclusive suburban New York neighborhood have. And it’s funny. It’s light hearted. It’s got elements of mystery to it. And it’s just a nice palate cleanser after the trauma of Michelle’s recommendation. I feel targeted, and yet I’m going to plow forward anyway and recommend “DTF St. Louis.” It’s on I believe it’s HBO. It’s HBO. Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini with other kind of smaller roles, people like Richard Jenkins. It is basically starts out with have a dead body, somebody’s dead, and then you’re going to go back through what happened. And it’s a love triangle about three bored, lonely, middle aged people. But pretty quickly it just gets weird. And then it gets weird again. And every episode it’s a limited it’s a limited series. It’s not going to have a second season. Praise the Lord because I hate it when they do that. Well, maybe it’ll be one of those anthology ones where they do “DTF Baltimore” or something. there we go. David did not like the ending. Michelle has not seen it all. I’ve seen three. And so no spoilers. No spoilers so far. It’s amazing so far. I thought it was like, riveting. But it’ll suck you in. It’ll pull you in. The performances are unbelievable. I am just riveted. I can’t look away. So fine. David, the ending is not to your liking, I get it. But the show and it’s not a huge commitment. Doesn’t have that many episodes. Do it. Do yourself a favor and then as part of your therapy, you can turn on to “Your Friends & Neighbors.” O.K, with that, we’re going to land this plane. Michelle, David, thank you so much for coming to solve the world’s problems. We will do again soon. Thank you. Thank you.
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