McConnell takes 'victory lap' to Fox News after Trump ally's brutal defeat

Thomas Kika
6h
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) speaking to reporters in the U.S. Capitol Building on November 15, 2022 (Consolidated News Photos/Shutterstock.com)

Sen. Mitch McConnell on Monday wrote a new op-ed for Fox News, blasting President Donald Trump and others in the GOP for their admiration of outgoing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with one journalist calling the piece his "victory lap."

Orbán has served as the prime minister of Hungary since 2010, ushering in a staunchly far-right and anti-democratic government that many on the international stage decried as a dictatorship. Over the weekend, however, his reign was toppled when his party took a decisive loss from the opposition, ushering in new leadership in the form of Péter Magyar.

This loss was seen as especially damaging for the global far-right movement and MAGA in particular, as Orbán's tactics for consolidating the government and clinging to power were widely seen as a template for far-right political movements. The Trump administration was so invested in maintaining Orbán's power that Vice President JD Vance was dispatched to Hungary to campaign for him, though his arrival appeared to have the opposite of the intended effect.

In the wake of the landslide loss, McConnell, the former GOP Senate majority leader and increasingly vocal Trump critic, published a piece for Fox News celebrating the development, citing Orbán's overt deference to Russia and Vladimir Putin, as well as his close ties to the likes of China and Iran. He also took the opportunity to excoriate those in his party who showed deep admiration for the Hungarian leader.

"[For] the better part of a decade, Hungarian politics has persisted as an object of intense fascination in certain corners of the American right," McConnell wrote. "This phenomenon is endlessly puzzling. America’s self-proclaimed national conservatives spoke of Orban’s Hungary as an oasis of traditionalism amid the wasteland of an ailing, liberal and decadent postmodern Europe. And some American politicians appear to have bought into the myth."

He continued: "To be clear, it is a myth. Orban’s champions on this side of the Atlantic may well consider his illiberal court-packing, crony capitalism or restriction of free speech an acceptable price for their desired social utopia. Yet for all the talk of reviving faith and family through statist intervention, Hungary’s religious participation and birth rates under his rule have declined right alongside the rest of the West."

McConnell further ripped the outgoing prime minister for his "fawning servitude to authoritarians," which he said ran "counter to American values." He also ripped members of the American right for their degree of fixation on Hungary as a political partner, arguing that the Eastern European nation offered "little in the way of strategic alignment" or "moral cooperation," and that the biggest shared value now between the U.S. and Hungary is the "the right to choose our own leaders, freely and fairly, without foreign or domestic interference," praising Hungarian's for their "distaste for the crony capitalism and corruption that have weakened Hungary’s economy and the image of its ruling party." He further noted that Magyar, himself a former member of Orbán's party and considered center-right politically, is unlikely to shift Hungary into a bastion of liberal politics.

"Watching this from Kentucky, it is hard to understand how some on the American right thought that staking U.S. influence on the outcome of a parliamentary election in a small, central European country was putting America’s interests first," McConnell concluded. "To the extent that what happens in Hungary matters to America, it is a question of whether its actions on the world stage — not its social policies — align with America’s strategic interests."

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