Viktor Orbán spent 16 years turning Hungary into a blueprint for one-man rule, rewriting the constitution, strangling the press and doing quiet favors for Vladimir Putin along the way.
On Sunday, Hungarian voters dismantled that blueprint at the ballot box. Donald Trump had sent JD Vance to Budapest to prevent exactly that outcome, and Hillary Clinton called into Morning Joe on Monday to make sure nobody missed the significance of what just happened.
Calling in, Clinton did not waste time on pleasantries. She called Trump’s relationship with Orbán part of “a really unholy alliance among autocrats and wannabe autocrats,” and argued that Sunday’s result was a shared defeat for both Trump and Putin.
“Some of that may sound very familiar to your viewers,” Clinton said, describing Orbán’s tactics of dominating the judiciary, strangling the free press and taking over universities.
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“What we should be learning from this is that you cannot allow one man rule, because one man rule leads to corruption, it leads to oppression, it leads to reckless adventures like we’re seeing with Trump in Iran.” She added that Trump’s behavior represents “an effort to model himself on Vladimir Putin.”
The result in Hungary was extraordinary. Opposition leader Péter Magyar’s Tisza party was projected to win 135 of 199 seats in parliament, a two-thirds supermajority that left Orbán’s Fidesz party with just 57 seats.
Orbán, who had spent years rewriting Hungary’s constitution, manipulating its electoral system and blocking EU aid to Ukraine on Putin’s behalf, called the result “painful” and conceded. One analyst summarized the losers simply: “Trump, Putin, Vance, the big guy.” Concise and accurate.
Trump’s investment in Orbán went well beyond a casual endorsement. He deployed Vance to Budapest to campaign for Orbán in the final days before the election and publicly pledged to use the “full Economic Might of the United States” to strengthen Hungary’s economy if Orbán won. Orbán lost anyway, by a margin that made the intervention look not just unsuccessful but slightly embarrassing.
Clinton framed the result as a warning for American voters regardless of political affiliation. “I don’t care what you call yourself politically, if you are an American, you care about American democracy here in our 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, then we want to be independent of the kind of behavior that you see coming from Trump,” she said. She called it “a wake up call for Americans.”
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
