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Loser Trump also rejected in Orban's big election loss: expert

Hungary’s most consequential election in decades has just delivered an important victory for democracy and accountability.

For Hungarians, opposition leader Péter Magyar’s emphatic defeat of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party ends 16 years of corruption and quasi-authoritarianism.

The outcome will also be felt widely, from Moscow to Washington and beyond.

In a contest characterised as a referendum on whether Hungary should pivot west or continue its authoritarian drift, Magyar’s victory is a stern rebuke to the dark, transnational forces of nativism, division and the politics of resentment that have become part of mainstream political discourse.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the election was not the turnout (more than 74%, shattering previous records), or even the result (a two-thirds supermajority for Magyar’s Tisza party, winning at least 138 of 199 parliamentary seats).

Both had been predicted for some time, and Orbán’s soft authoritarianism had always left the door ajar for a possible opposition victory at the polls.

Rather, the biggest surprise might have been Orbán’s immediate concession. He didn’t try to manufacture a crisis or use his security services to hold onto power. Given the strength of anti-government sentiment in Hungary, such a move could have led to a “colour revolution” – the type of massive street protests seen previously in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries.

This could have turned bloody. Liberal Hungarians, and the European Union more broadly, will be heaving a collective sigh of relief.

Why Orbán was suddenly vulnerable

Having won office, Magyar will need to move quickly but also carefully to bring change, so as not to alienate too many former Fidesz voters.

He has already asked President Tamaś Sulyok to resign, along with other Orbán loyalists. The Tisza supermajority in parliament is important here. It will be required for constitutional amendments to dismantle the architecture of Orbán’s authoritarian state.

Fortunately, this will be easier in Hungary than fully fledged autocratic systems. Indeed, Orbán’s longevity can somewhat be attributed to the fact that his brand of authoritarianism was only partial.

Certainly, it had the structural elements of an autocracy. That included widespread, government-controlled gerrymandering to ensure Fidesz victories, and the cynical diversion of state funds to cities and provinces controlled by Orbán’s political allies.

In addition, the nationalised media ecosystem was heavily supportive of the government, although alternative voices kept debate alive via foreign-owned news organisations.

But Orbán’s success also came from facing weak and easily fragmented or coopted oppositions. Magyar – a former Orbán ally – ran a disciplined campaign that nullified the electoral advantage for Fidesz.

Ultimately, though, when voters have a choice – even a constrained one – they will eventually reject governments that rely on blame and victimhood to mask their inability to offer people a better future.

Under Orbán, Hungary was consistently ranked the most corrupt nation in Europe. In 2025, it ranked last in the EU on relative household wealth. It had also suffered rampant inflation and economic stagnation after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Video footage of country estates built by Hungary’s elites, complete with zebras roaming the grounds, perfectly symbolised the popular outrage with wealth inequality.

A setback for Putin, Trump and right-wing populism

Hungary’s new start also sends a powerful message to other nations. Clearly the biggest loser from the election is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which had hastily tapped Kremlin powerbroker Sergey Kiriyenko and a team of “political technologists” to assist Orbán.

Under Orbán, Hungary was the strongest pro-Kremlin voice in the EU. It regularly stymied aid packages for Ukraine, tied up decision-making on the war in bureaucratic processes, and held the European Commission to ransom by threatening hold-out votes.

In fact, just days before the election, Bloomberg published a transcript of a phone call between Orbán and Putin from October 2025, in which Orbán compared himself to a mouse helping free the caged Russian lion.

This came on the back of revelations that Orbán’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, and other Hungarian officials had regularly been leaking confidential EU discussions to Moscow.

Another loser from the Hungarian election is the Trump White House.

The pre-election Budapest visit by US Vice President JD Vance to shore up support for Orbán was breathtakingly hypocritical. Vance farcically demanded an end to foreign election meddling, while engaging in precisely that. The White House then doubled down, with Trump promising on Truth Social to aid Orbán with the “full Economic Might of the United States”.

Now, though, Trump is very publicly on the losing side. And like the debacle of his Iran war, he tends to chafe at losing.

The election also shows that US foreign interference campaigns are not invulnerable, though the White House will doubtless continue excoriating Europe. The Trump administration’s view that Europe is heading for “civilisational erasure”, necessitating US efforts to “cultivate resistance” and “help Europe correct its current trajectory” is documented in its 2025 National Security Strategy.

But the broader movements representing what Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar calls the “Putinisation of global politics” have been repudiated by Hungary’s election result.

Under Orbán, Hungary was a hub for ultraconservative voices. Think tanks like the MAGA-boosting US Heritage Foundation and Hungary’s Danube Institute regularly held prominent dialogues bemoaning Europe’s capitulation to wokeism.

The Hungarian iteration of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), sponsored by the American Conservative Union, was a key calendar for Western right-wing politicians and commentators, including former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

China will also be keenly watching Magyar’s new government, especially since it has viewed Hungary as a soft entry point to the EU. The large-scale investment in electric vehicle manufacturing, especially battery production, are part of a growing Chinese business footprint in the country.

For Beijing, the question will be whether Magyar seeks to sacrifice this lucrative investment to burnish his European credentials.

What about the winners?

In addition to Hungarians outside Orbán’s orbit of elites, the EU will welcome the news that it remains an attractive force.

Ukraine, too, may find it easier to secure European assistance. At the very least, smaller Ukraine detractors like Slovakia will have to choose between acquiescing quietly or thrusting themselves uncomfortably into the open.

Yet, although Hungary’s result is promising, the world is still trending towards illiberalism.

And with the US midterm elections fast approaching, far-right American politicians, including Trump himself, will be studying Hungary’s lessons closely. If they conclude that Orbán’s brand of authoritarianism was too soft, a more hardline path looms as an ominous alternative.The Conversation

Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Trump 'crashing out' over Orban loss: 'He can't handle the truth'

On Sunday, far-right Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban was voted out of office after 16 years of dictatorial rule. His defeat not only spelled significant change for the nation of Hungary, but was widely interpreted as a major blow against far-right movements around the world, including MAGA in the United States. As a result, President Donald Trump is “crashing out” in the face of a bad sign for his authoritarian political project.

Following Orban’s loss, Trump — usually not shy about sharing his thoughts on any subject — declined to answer questions from reporters about the election, making a quick escape to board Air Force One. Many who watched this exit online were struck by the typically wordy president’s lack of response.

"You can tell he’s so close to crashing out lmao,” wrote one commenter on a NewsNation broadcast of the moment. "He can't handle the truth," said another, with a third still declaring, "LOL. This has been a week of huge losses in the life of this big loser."

It may seem strange for an American president to hang so much importance on a Hungarian election, but not only has Orban been a longtime “illiberal” ally of Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he had become something of a superstar within the MAGA movement, garnering headline appearances at events like CPAC due to the popularity of his conservative, anti-immigrant, authoritarian policies within the Republican Party.

Orban’s election or lack thereof was viewed as so symbolically vital to MAGA that Vice President JD Vance was sent to Hungary during the final days of the race in an attempt to help build support. Vance’s appearance did not have the desired effect, as Orban’s party was defeated by a landslide.

For many within the MAGA-sphere, the rise of figures like Orban and Trump has been embraced as a signal of the growing power of the far-right movement and its righteous if not outright fated assumption of power around the globe. But Orban’s loss suggests that history is not as inevitable as they thought.

As Ivan Krastev, chair of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, explained, Orban’s loss will have “an incredible psychological impact” on the far-right. Or as Orban biographer Pal Daniel Renyi put it, the election is proof to Orban, Trump, and their followers that “nothing lasts forever.”

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'Third-rate' America welcomes losers exiled from other democracies: top historian

In the wake of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán’s electoral loss — which was widely interpreted as a major blow to the global MAGA movement — a number of his cronies have been forced to flee abroad. Among these is Polish politician Zbigniew Ziobro, who fled to Hungary in 2023 after his attempts to instill Poland with authoritarianism failed. Now Ziobro has gone to the United States under the protection of President Donald Trump, and according to renowned historian and fascism expert Timothy Snyder, this raises disturbing questions about the present state of the U.S.

As Snyder explains, by the time Ziobro arrived in Hungary, he was on the run from serious crimes. As a justice minister in Poland, he was found guilty of mishandling funds intended to be used for the victims of crime, diverting the money instead to a spyware program he leveraged to monitor journalists and political opponents. In Hungary, he appeared safe alongside fellow authoritarian Orban, but when the latter lost power, the likes of Ziobro were no longer welcome.

“Hungary will no longer be a dumping ground for internationally wanted criminals,” said Orban’s successor Peter Magyar, who called out Ziobro by name.

“When democracy wins, the losers go to America, it seems,” said Snyder. “What was left for Ziobro? The United States. You might not have heard of Ziobro, but Donald Trump has.”

Ziobro’s arrival in the U.S. has caused a global scandal. As Snyder notes, “Ziobro is a wanted man with no passport. The Trump White House just went to a good deal of trouble to bring him to the U.S.” The international community is wondering how Ziobro could have crossed the border without a passport, with many suggesting that it could only have been done with the express support of the Trump administration. Now Poland says it expects the U.S. to extradite Ziobro to face charges.

“This teaches us, once again, how much the Trump project is an international one,” explains Snyder. “Americans are punished every day, but foreign authoritarian friends are remembered.”

Beyond the many legal and political issues this situation raises, Snyder argues that Trump’s willingness to embrace Ziobro prompts pressing questions about the ethics underpinning American society.

“What does this mean about our country when we become a place where we welcome people who are accused of corruption, we welcome people who are architects of attempted authoritarian transitions, we welcome people who are fleeing not only from their own country but from another attempted authoritarian regime — what does that mean?” Snyder muses. “Doesn’t that make us a bit third-rate ourselves — to become the kind of third repository of people like this?”

To Snyder, it comes down to a matter of identity: “It’s a question for us as Americans. Don’t we all agree that we would like the rule of law? Don’t we all agree that we would like for politicians at home or abroad to be following the rule of law? What does it mean when we go around the law to bring people to our country who are serious opponents to the rule of law? What does it mean when the people who get special treatment in the United States are precisely those who have been trying to break democracy elsewhere? What does that say about us?”

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Hungary's right-wing corruption continues — thanks to Trump

The humiliating demise of Viktor Orban's authoritarian regime is bracing news for endangered democracies, including our own, but America isn't Hungary. Of the parallels that can be drawn between their despot and ours, the most salient may have been commented on the least -- the overwhelming and unprecedented Mafia-style corruption that enriched the ruling family and entrenched their power.

It was the corruption that motivated Peter Magyar, a lifelong loyal appartchik until two years ago, to break with Orban's Fidesz party and inaugurate the campaign to overthrow the regime. It was the corruption that forced the European Union to act against Budapest by withholding billions in funding and isolating its government. And it was the corruption -- so pervasive in Hungary's media, judiciary and business institutions -- that finally drove otherwise conservative Hungarian voters to reject the crooked outfit that had ruled them for 16 years.

Liberals in Hungary celebrated Magyar's election victory, not necessarily because they agree with the new prime minister on every issue -- they don't -- but because he vowed to clean up Orban's legacy of outrageous theft, to enforce accountability and to strengthen the nation's frayed ties with Europe. Relying on his long experience inside the Fidesz machine, Magyar was able to expose its sleazy deals, including a pardon scandal that embroiled his then-wife, who had served as Orban's justice minister.

Like so much of the criminality perpetrated by Orban and his cronies, that pardon affair echoed a train of remarkably similar offenses in the Trump White House. And as Magyar emphasized throughout his innovative grassroots campaign, the cost of Orban's venality fell on ordinary Hungarians, whose national wealth was siphoned off to enrich the dictatorship's cronies.

According to Akos Hadhazy, a leading voice against corruption as an independent member of Hungary's parliament, the Mafia-style graft perpetrated by the Orban regime has looted more than 2.8 billion euros (over $3.2 billion) annually from public funds. Much of that stolen money came from the EU itself, which played a role in the regime's demise by withholding further funds from suspect projects. Among the reasons to renew ties with Brussels, as Magyar often explained, was to facilitate prosecution of the "Orban Mafia" that stole those EU funds.

The details of the Fidesz government's boodling might almost seem quaint in comparison with the high-tech crypto scams hatched in the Trump White House. Viktor Orban's son-in-law, an entrepreneur named Istvan Tiborcz, became wealthy by forming Elios, a company that won multimillion-euro contracts to upgrade street lighting in cities and towns all over the country. Those contracts were financed by the EU, but as auditors later discovered, the project details were designed to favor Tiborcz's firm and eliminate any competition. In fact, the same officials who oversaw the lighting specifications also wrote the Elios bids.

EU investigators recommended that Hungary void those contracts, claw back the money, and commence legal action against the officials and business executives responsible for the scandal. The crooks in Budapest have been "investigating" that case for the past 11 years.

Meanwhile even more public millions flowed into the accounts of Orban's father, Gyozy, whose real estate development company swelled with government and EU contracts -- and is suspected of serving as a front for Orban himself. This arrangement smacks of the millions in U.S. government funding and related payments that have flowed over the years to the Trump Organization.

Various other Orban cronies -- notably including the chief of his cabinet, Antal Rogan, and his closest friend since childhood, Lorinc Meszaros -- have walked away with enormous fortunes. So brazen was Rogan that the U.S. Treasury sanctioned him in January 2025, during the final weeks of the Biden administration.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control found that Rogan had "orchestrated Hungary's system for distributing public contracts and resources to cronies loyal to himself and the Fidesz political party, (including) schemes designed to control several strategic sectors of the Hungarian economy and to divert proceeds from those sectors to himself and to reward loyalists from his political party."

The Trump administration lifted the U.S. sanctions on Rogan within three months of taking office, as part of its broader abandonment of anticorruption agencies and measures throughout government.

As for Meszaros, he is the richest man in Hungary, sitting atop a fortune estimated at over $3 billion. Having started out as a gas-pipe fitter in 2006, with assets worth less than $42,000, his wealth grew exponentially through state energy and construction deals. When asked how this could have happened, Meszaros modestly attributed his wealth to "God, luck and Viktor Orban."

Americans have long seemed indifferent to the orgy of corruption that has characterized President Donald Trump's career and especially his return to power. Citizens whose news consumption is limited to Fox News, Newsmax and the MAGA media have heard little or nothing about the ways that Trump, his wife and offspring, and their circle of supporters have gorged themselves in one shady deal after another, often at risk to our national security.

Yet somehow, despite a state-controlled Hungarian media universe, Magyar's movement brought the truth about Orban's corruption to the people, who responded with appropriate fury. In this country, Democrats of every persuasion must convey to every American voter that same message about the decadent MAGA movement and its greedy overlord.

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The president’s latest 'humiliation' shows the 'catastrophic failure' of Trumpism

In early April, the world was treated to the strange spectacle of Vice President JD Vance attempting a phone call to President Donald Trump from the stage of a campaign rally for embattled Hungarian President Viktor Orban.

“Let’s hope he actually answers,” Vance told a crowd of thousands, “or this is gonna be very embarrassing.”

Trump didn’t pick up. The American president had sent his second in command to stump for Orban, hoping to drum up support for the latter’s floundering campaign to maintain power after 16 years of “illiberal” leadership. Orban’s far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-democratic policies had garnered him superstar status among the American GOP, but now he was flagging in the polls, and Trump and his allies worried that his loss would prove the limitations of their ideology and portend the end of MAGA altogether. So Trump went all-in on supporting an Orban win.

But then he lost in a landslide. And according to Greg Sargent of the New Republic, this is no mere “humiliation” for Trump, but proves the “catastrophic failure” and “deep unpopularity of Trumpism.”

As an example of this, look to JD Vance’s speech.

“It was packed with MAGA-right buzzwords, claiming Orbán must be elected to save ‘Western civilization’ from mass migration and the ‘bureaucrats in Brussels’ — the European Union and the woke, globalist enemies of national ‘sovereignty,’” wrote Sargent. “Obviously that message failed.”

Vance appealed to a sense of international solidarity between far-right authoritarians, but this fell on the deaf ears of Hungarian voters who had seen their quality of life diminish dramatically after nearly two decades of Orban leadership. As Sargent explains, they’d realized that “right-populist hostility to international alliances and multilateral institutions, both in Hungary and the United States, has proven disastrous.” They’d witnessed the failures of Orban’s American backer’s policies and how “after only one year, every pillar of his nationalist agenda — the tariffs, the deportations, the ‘America First’ imperialism and conquest — has already proven” to be unpopular and unworkable. They’d experienced firsthand the extreme version of far-right restrictions on free speech, association, media, and human rights that MAGA hopes to impose in the U.S.

“The Hungary results show that determined authoritarianism can lose to challengers who campaign on democracy, the rule of law, and an embrace of internationalist institutions,” concludes Sargent. “Between that and the catastrophic failure — and deep unpopularity — of Trumpism at home,” Democrats have a real chance of ending the MAGA project once and for all.

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Trump admin's campaign for Orbán backfired spectacularly — and revealed a deeper problem

Hungary’s outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was hailed by the U.S. right as a Trump-like authoritarian. Orbán, an anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist macho man who self-described as “illiberal,” was the Heritage Foundation’s darling. As foundation president Kevin Roberts described Orbán’s ‘soft dictatorship,’ Hungary was “not just a model . . . but the model,” presumably for turning the U.S. into full-fledged fascism following Project 2025’s blueprint.

As Steve Bannon put it, Orbán was “Trump before Trump.” In power for 16 years, Orbán was called a “21st-century dictator,” a populist strongman, and an authoritarian capitalist. Deliberately pulling Hungary’s “illiberal state” model away from Western European dogmas Orbán considered too egalitarian and liberal, he drew inspiration instead from the oppressive dictatorships of Turkey, Russia and China.

Trump, Vance and the architects of Project 2025, in turn, drew inspiration from Orbán.

Similarities between Orbán and Trump are no accident

Orbán deliberately eroded free markets and the rule of law, goals Trump has adopted with uneven success. Orbán damaged the Hungarian economy through crony capitalism and corruption. He, like Trump, concentrated economic power by empowering and enriching loyalists while weakening the judiciary. Like Trump’s latest moves to ‘own’ equity stakes in corporations seeking regulatory approval, Orbán also created a high-corruption environment that concentrated power among loyalists, widening the gap between Hungary’s haves and have-nots.

Orbán also used the weight of a fascist state, including financial and regulatory measures, to silence critics and kill Hungary’s independent media. Trump flexes similar strongman tactics in the U.S. on a near-daily basis. From direct funding cuts, to FCC/ regulatory ‘investigations,’ to physical restrictions on journalist access, Trump has shown unprecedented aggression in seeking media control.

Critics also describe how Orbán routinely created “imaginary enemies” to distract voters, another Hitlerian maneuver perfected by Trump. From falsely depicting immigrants as violent criminals, to accusing DEI programs of ‘white bashing,’ Trump constantly stokes social division by creating then perpetuating imaginary enemies. Even during his infamous DoorDash delivery this week, Trump clumsily interjected “men playing women’s sports” into a staged conversation about taxes on tips. The forced non sequitur was awkward for its obviousness.

Let the repairs… begin!

Orbán’s delicious comeuppance—a real landslide, unlike Trump’s claimed landslide—will help restore Hungary’s ties to Europe, after years of Orbán efforts to sever them. It will also help Ukraine survive Putin’s illegal invasion.

Newly elected Prime Minister Peter Magyar has already said that Hungary will stop being Putin’s puppet, and will no longer block EU aid to Ukraine or sanctions on Russia. For his part, Zelenskyy hailed Magyar’s win as ‘the victory of light over darkness.’

The website Direkt26, a rare independent outlet still functioning in Hungary, documented how Orbán colluded with Putin over the years, with Orbán describing himself as a ‘mouse’ to Putin’s ‘lion.’ Just before the election, at a Budapest concert, thousands of concertgoers chanted “Russians, go home!”—a public acknowledgement of the problem and the same chant their grandparents used when Russia invaded Hungary in 1956.

Trump, Vance lose their poster boy

As positive as Orbán’s defeat is for Hungary, Ukraine, and the EU, the sweetest reverberations are yet to come— in the U.S.

In the last weeks of Orbán’s campaign, Trump, Vance, Putin, and other authoritarians formally endorsed him. Vance, who broke with longstanding US diplomatic precedent by campaigning for him in person, spoke at a rally in Budapest and declared, "We have got to get Viktor Orbán reelected!"

Double blind to irony, Vance urged Hungarians to act “with no outside forces pressuring you,” despite his own outside pressure on them. Vance seems to assume Orbán voters are as intellectually impaired as Trump’s supporters.

Best of all, Vance’s appearance helped the opposition. Magyar was able to use Vance’s 11th hour appearance as evidence of Orbán’s open embrace of foreign interference, contrary to Orbán’s constant harping against the foreign influence of Brussels, or the EU. Magyar, decidedly not blind to irony, used Vance to flip Orbán’s rhetoric against “Brussels bureaucrats” back onto him, using it to highlight Orbán’s own reliance on Trump/Vance/ Putin’s political backing.

Democracy: 1, MAGA: 0

The Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC), an amalgam of populist and far right activists undecided on women’s suffrage, converged on Budapest for four consecutive years to foster ties between America’s far right politicians and those in other countries. Perhaps, with Orbán gone, C-PAC will meet instead in Moscow. Good riddance.

Trump’s domestic agenda so obviously follows Orbán’s that someday, if Fox News ever decides to report the truth, voters in MAGA will eventually catch on. Orbán used consolidated cronyism and corruption to stay in power for 16 years. The parallels with Trump are obvious.

Come November, the parallels in their political fates will also emerge. As Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy put it, the most important lesson from Orbán’s landslide loss, despite Orbán controlling Hungary’s media and judiciary, is that “(E)ven a guy who rigs the system can be defeated when the people unite and turn out against him.”

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.

'Make you great again' while we steal everything: How despots use racism as distraction

Podcasters Danielle Moodie and Wajahat Ali took time on Wednesday to examine the kind of devastating things that racism can do to a democracy.

It can kill it for a start, particularly when it’s used as tool by authoritarians.

Ali referenced Vice President JD Vance’s recent trip to Hungary to support Hungarian authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, who ransacked his former democratic nation to make himself almost impossible to remove despite colossal disapproval from his impoverished voters.

“[Orban] took over and replaced the judiciary. Took over and replaced the government. Took over and replaced the arts. And meanwhile, guess what happened? He fed them chum,” said Ali. “‘I'm going to make you great again. You know who the real problem is? The Muslims. You know who the real problem is? The Jews. You know who the real problem is? The immigrants.’ And while he was distracting them with hate and xenophobia, guess what? Tell me if this sounds familiar. Orban and his friends raped and pillaged, took all the resources and all the wealth.”

Moodie referenced comparisons to similar enrichment schemes by the family of President Donald Trump, who have reaped billions in new wealth as Trump distracts MAGA with racism and xenophobia, according to critics.

“Donald Trump's sons, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, invested money in what? A drone company — right before the war began,” said Moodie. “Barron bought oil stocks right before the war began. This is a f—— grift at the expense of people's lives.”

But the ride doesn’t always last forever, said Ali, pointing out that after roughly a decade, Hungarians are out in the streets protesting.

“[Hungarians are saying] ‘wait a second. We think we've been lied to. Wait a second. You didn't make us great again. You made yourself and your rich friends great again. And because this power of Orban is finally very fragile now and people are p—— off."

"But who's gone all in [for Orban," demanded Ali. "Look at the same characters. Who went last week? Netanyahu's son. Who praised Orban? Netanyahu. Who went this week? JD Vance.”

"It's a big club. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. And we're seeing it in real time," said Ali.

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Inside the election that could spell the end of MAGA

On Friday, much of the news was focused on peace negotiations with Iran, with Vice President JD Vance heading to Pakistan to lead the U.S. delegation. But many Americans might not be aware of where Vance just left: an election in Hungary that, according to renowned historian Timothy Snyder, could herald the end of the MAGA movement.

On Sunday, Hungary will hold parliamentary elections that will determine whether Viktor Orban — the country’s current prime minister, who has ruled with an increasingly iron fist since 2010 — will retain or be removed from power. A star of the international far-right, Orban has famously turned Hungary into an “illiberal” democracy in which elections theoretically exist but are not fair, and where the state and social functions are dominated by “oligarcho-fascism.”

Orban’s successful quest for personal power, one-party rule, and strict conservative social controls has made him a revered figure among the American far right, aligning him with President Donald Trump, Vance, and the GOP, and garnering him top billing at CPAC. So intertwined have the political right of the U.S. and Hungary become, that Vance just appeared at a series of Orban’s campaign rallies, hoping to energize the authoritarian’s flagging electoral support.

Like Trump and Vance, Orban believes in the “politics of eternity,” in which one man rules indefinitely. And while he is “good at the politics of endless grievance,” Hungarians are aware that their standard of living has fallen under his leadership, and of the rampant corruption and crumbling institutions that plague the nation. Then the country’s right-wing party was hit by a child sex abuse and cover-up scandal, and quiet dissent erupted into massive public protest. As a result, a new opposition party soared in popularity, and it now appears that Orban could lose.

Snyder points out that not only would this mean the loss of one of Trump’s most important global allies and evidence that illiberal policies don’t work, but it could also herald the end of MAGA.

“The most important consequence for Trump and to Vance of Orbán’s defeat would be the revelation that history is not in fact going in a single direction,” writes Snyder, “that their power, or the power of people like them, is not assured for all time.”

A central aspect of the far-right mentality is the idea that its authoritarian mission is somehow destined to be.

“In their view of themselves,” says Snyder, “they are not of course the creatures of historical structure: the power of oil money; the psychology of social media, the perversion of wealth inequality. As they see matters, they are beyond history now, beyond historical change, beyond the actions of the peoples in whose name they rule.”

But such a major loss would reveal the fallacy of this ideology. The far-right, MAGA, and leaders like Orban, Trump, and Vance do not represent the “end of history” as they would like to think.

“They are wrong,” writes Snyder. “History goes on. Just as Hungary once offered the international oligarchical far right the confidence that a formula had been found, it now offers to men such as Vance and Trump the anxiety that voting might actually make a difference, that democracy might actually turn out to be more than a slogan, that unpredictable change is still possible, that the future is open.”

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Revealed: Trump's favorite European leader offered help to Iran

Despite the adoration President Viktor Orbán's far-right government gets from American conservatives and U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Washington Post, Hungary reached out to offer help to Iran after a major attack in late 2024.

The incident in question took place in September 2024 and saw Israel cause "thousands" of pagers owned by the militant group Hezbollah to explode. Hezbollah is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist group, with Iran being its main sponsor. The explosions ultimately killed 12 people and left as many as 2,800 injured.

In a report released Wednesday morning, the Post revealed correspondence between Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto and his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, in which he pledged that Hungary would aid Iran in the wake of the pager attack. This was based on "a copy of a Hungarian government transcript of the Sept. 30 call obtained and authenticated by a Western intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post."

"Our secret service has already contacted your services and we will share all the information we have gathered during the investigation," Szijjarto told Araghchi during the phone call. "Every possible document will be shared with your services."

Hungary had been implicated in the attack, in a way, after the "Taiwanese company whose brand was on the devices had told reporters they were manufactured by a Hungarian company under a licensing agreement." Szijjarto stressed to his Iranian counterpart that Hungary had not been involved with the attack in any way.

"But the call — and Szijjarto’s apparent readiness to curry favor with Iran’s foreign minister — pose uncomfortable questions about the Orban government’s relationship with Iran at a time when the Trump administration is locked in conflict with Tehran while at the same time the White House is providing support to Orban’s reelection campaign in a high-stakes election," the Post explained.

Hungary's government has been widely considered to be a dictatorship since Orbán ascended to power in 2010, and the leader himself has been described by many as a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite those criticisms, he has nonetheless become a darling of the global far-right political movement, including the MAGA movement in the U.S., with conservatives closely studying the tactics he used to consolidate power and take control of Hungarian media outlets, tactics which the second Trump administration has attempted to emulate. Trump has also enthusiastically endorsed Orbán as he faces dwindling reelection odds in the upcoming Hungarian election, lagging in polls behind a center-right opponent.

"Orban’s government has been a bastion of support for the MAGA movement with Orban at the forefront of efforts to present a Christian nationalist front against migrants across Europe, while at the same time aligning himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin," the Post's report added.

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Trump’s far-right allies refuse to give up despite humiliating setback

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance suffered a major disappointment when, on April 12, far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was voted out of office after 16 years. Although Trump and Vance campaigned aggressively for Orbán — who they considered a valuable ally of the MAGA movement — he lost to Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar and the Tisza party by roughly 19 percent.

In an op-ed published by The Guardian published on May 7, however, Cas Mudde — an international affairs professor at the University of Georgia and author of the 2019 book "The Far Right Today" — stresses that Orbán's humiliating defeat doesn't mean the populist far right is going away.

"There is simultaneously a consensus that Donald Trump has gone from inspiration to 'liability' for the global far right," Mudde explains. "While the fall of Orbán has great symbolic significance and important consequences for EU politics…. we should be very careful not to read too much into it for three reasons. First, as far as lessons for how to defeat so-called illiberal democrats are concerned, we must bear in mind that Orbán was in power for an exceptionally rare 16 years. This allowed him to oversee not only a political transformation of Hungary, but an economic and societal one…. Second, while the European far right has lost its unofficial leader, it is not in decline…. Third, it is true that Trump is, at the moment, 'toxic' for the far right, although this had no significant effect on the Hungarian election."

Mudde strongly disagrees with claims that the far right is "in decline."

"Sure, some other far-right parties have also recently lost elections (in Bulgaria, for example) or power (the Netherlands)," Mudde argues. "But far-right parties remain in government in a variety of EU member states (Czech Republic, Italy), and lead the polls in several others (Austria, France). The thing is, the far right is here to stay, and many of its parties are as established as the former 'mainstream' parties. And, like other parties, their electoral support fluctuates and is affected by internal and external factors, such as corruption, infighting and crises in government."

Mudde adds, "More importantly, the mainstreaming and normalization of far-right actors and ideas continue unabated. (Prime Minister) Giorgia Meloni's Italy has become a mandatory pilgrimage site for politicians who try to present themselves as tough on immigration."

Trump, according to Mudde, "helps the European far right simply by being the U.S. president."

"Even worse," the University of Georgia professor warns, "because Trump's behavior is so extreme and often seems unhinged, it is very easy for European far-right leaders to seem 'moderate' in comparison — after all, he or she is 'not as bad as Trump.' This endless comparison, and the inability to accept that there can be various shades of far right, helps savvy politicians such as Meloni. By not acting aggressively, erratically and loudly like Trump — or, in her own country, Matteo Salvini — she is mistaken for a mere 'conservative' rather than a radical-right politician."

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MAGA desperate for new far-right despot to idolize

For many years, far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz party seemed entrenched in Hungary. Orbán didn't come to power via a military coup d'état like Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile in 1973 but rather, was voted into office. Orbán, however, did everything he could to undermine Hungary's system of checks and balances, making it very difficult to replace him as prime minister.

But on Sunday, April 12, Orbán was voted out of office after 16 years in Hungary's parliamentary elections, and it wasn't even close. Center-right Prime Minister-elect Péter Magyar, running with the Tisza party, won by roughly 19 percent. U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance were bitterly disappointed, having given Orbán their enthusiastic support.

Journalist Steven Greenhut, in an article published by the libertarian Reason on April 24, examines the implications that Orbán's double-digit defeat has for the MAGA movement in the United States. MAGA, according to Greenhut, now finds itself looking for another foreign despot to idolize.

"Legions of conservatives — including the sitting vice president — have flocked to Hungary to champion the wonders of Viktor Orbán's self-described 'illiberal" government," Greenhut explains. "If you're not up on political lingo, the term 'illiberal' does not refer to modern liberalism, but to the classical liberalism of our founders. Right-wing post-liberalism is about replacing limited government with something like elected autocracy…. Hungarian voters handily rebuked him and his Vladimir Putin-friendly Fidesz party…. despite President Donald Trump's fawning support."

Greenhut continues, "It's been splendid watching the weeping and gnashing of teeth from American MAGA supporters. In an admirable and hard-hitting column in Fox News, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) noted that 'Hungarian politics has persisted as an object of intense fascination in certain corners of the American right.' He found this affinity 'endlessly puzzling,' as 'America's self-proclaimed national conservatives spoke of Orbán's Hungary as an oasis of traditionalism amid the wasteland of an ailing, liberal and decadent postmodern Europe.'"

Greenhut notes that Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts "slammed" McConnell's column in an April 13 post on X, writing, "7-term Republican Senator celebrates Hungary becoming a vassal state of the EU" — a post that, Greenhut laments, shows how "deformed" parts of the American right have become.

Juho Romakkaniemi, CEO of the Finland Chamber of Commerce, called Roberts out on X, posting, "Excuse me, sir. Unfortunately you don’t seem to understand what you are talking about. Hungary was a corrupt slave state of Russia. Now it took its sovereignity back. Being a Member of the EU is not ’being a vassal’, but being a part of something bigger - for not to be bullied."

Greenhut observes, "In Hungary, the country sank on the Freedom Index, as the Cato Institute explained. Its attacks on private property and exertion of state control over industry have caused its economic fortunes to fall behind its neighbors…. I would never have believed that modern conservatives would behave like 1980s leftists. Instead of looking for inspiration from illiberal foreign or domestic leaders, they need to rediscover the classical liberal values that made our nation so free and prosperous."

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