Is Hungary a Model for Trump?

Tomorrow in Florida, Donald Trump will host Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, whom Trump often praises. “He is a very great leader, a very strong man,” Trump has said. “Some people don’t like him because he’s too strong.”

In a recent newsletter, I spoke with some of my colleagues covering Trump’s campaign about what a second term might look like. Another way to understand how he may govern is to examine his affinity for Orban. In today’s newsletter, I talk to Andrew Higgins, who writes about Hungary as The Times’s bureau chief for East and Central Europe.

Tucker as a model

David: People often describe Orban as autocratic. But he’s not a ruler who jails or kills his opponents. Can you describe how he suppresses dissent?

Andrew: Hungary under Prime Minister Orban is far from being a police state like Russia or Belarus. As an opposition legislator said to me last week in Budapest, it is more of a “propaganda state” in which Orban’s governing party, Fidesz, controls the media landscape.

Orban does not jail his opponents or have them beaten up the way Vladimir Putin does, but he has relentlessly squeezed the space available for critical voices by getting business cronies to buy up independent media and starving the few others of advertising revenue. Fidesz-controlled outlets treat critics as traitors and deviants. He has also funded a raft of friendly research institutes and a university that help flood the zone with pro-government views.

When speaking at a 2022 gathering of American conservatives in Budapest, Orban hailed Tucker Carlson as a model of how media should work: “There should be shows like his day and night — or, as you say, 24/7.” In Hungary, that goal has been achieved.

David: Orban originally won a democratic election. But he has also changed the rules to stay in power. How so?

Andrew: He is a master of playing democracy against itself. Orban always presents himself as representing the democratic will of the Hungarian people. That boast is in some ways justified: His party has won four general elections since 2010, and he has been in power longer than any democratically elected E.U. leader now in office.

But the playing field is far from even (as this Times article explains). Orban’s party, Fidesz, has gerrymandered. It has allowed voters to register in districts where they don’t live. It spies on government critics.

Fidesz also uses the government to shape and skew public opinion. One example: “national consultations,” pseudo-democratic exercises in which citizens are sent questionnaires with loaded questions. The government recently announced that 99 percent of Hungarians rejected the E.U.’s policy on immigration. The question, however, asked people whether they wanted “migrant ghettos” in Hungary. Most people didn’t return the questionnaire, but Fidesz has trumpeted the result on billboards.

The message is that the government represents the will of all but a tiny minority of the people — and which side do you want to be on?

Mavericks vs. ‘boring’

David: Ideologically, what do Trump and Orban have in common? And do they have any big disagreements?

Andrew: Their affinity with each other is more stylistic than ideological. They share a “let’s just rock the boat” contrarianism. “I like mavericks,” Orban said a few days ago, explaining why he respects Trump so much. Orban mocked fellow leaders as “more and more boring.”

Today, their biggest points of policy overlap are immigration and Russia. Both men have homed in on public unease at uncontrolled immigration and the risk of war, possibly a nuclear one, if the West gives Ukraine more weapons.

One big issue on which they diverge is China. Orban has put China at the center of his “Eastern Opening,” to build tighter ties with Asia. As other countries have soured on China, Hungary has become its last reliable political partner in the E.U. and a destination for huge Chinese investments in electric car and battery factories.

David: What do you think Americans mulling the prospect of a second Trump term can learn from Orban’s years in power?

Andrew: Hungary is a small country with only around 10 million people — and only 34 years of democratic elections — so Orban’s model cannot be easily replicated in the United States. The U.S. has stronger independent institutions.

In my view, the canary in the coal mine will be media freedom. I’ve spent years reporting in Russia, Hong Kong, China and now Eastern Europe. And media freedom and pluralism are the first things to go when autocracy takes hold.

Journalists, of course, are prone to overstate their own importance, but I was in Moscow when Vladimir Putin came to power. The first clear sign that Russia was taking the path toward today’s dictatorship was the Kremlin’s assault in 2001 on NTV, then an independent television station. It is now a propaganda bullhorn.

Or look at China. Of all the slogans chanted by student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the most persistent — and most unsettling for the Party — was “Press Freedom.” Autocratic rulers are afraid of criticism.

Related: Orban’s goal is to lead a populist and nativist rebellion against Europe’s liberal elite.

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