Trump Sank Viktor Orbán’s Reelection. It Can Happen Here, too.

Trump backed Hungary’s prime minister and helped end his 16-year rule, putting far-right leaders on notice: when voters are fed up, they show up.

Viktor Orbán’s defeat is a blow to Donald Trump and JD Vance, and to the far right around the world. He was the spiritual godfather to Trump, who seems to have become so toxic that association with him has become a liability.

It’s bad news for Trump, but it’s a huge win for democracy. Hungarians delivered a landslide win for the opposition with a staggering 78% voter turnout. The undeniable outcome forced Orbán to do what Trump never could: concede.

And it serves as proof of concept for how to defeat far-right nationalist populism: when enough people vote, these strongmen go down.

Who is This Man

Orbán was sort of the OG of this latest wave of authoritarian leaders. If Putin wrote the original playbook, Orbán adapted it and spread it. He became a template for far-right leaders across Europe, and then Republicans here at home. They all run in the same circles, share tips, rely on each other. Remove him, and it’s like the mean girls no longer have a queen bee to look up to.

Trump has been running the Viktor Orbán playbook, especially in his second term:

Consolidate and control the media: check. (Someone call Bari Weiss over at CBS, and see if she needs a Gatorade working overtime to turn the network into state news.) Stack the courts with sycophantic judges: check. Overhaul election rules: he’s trying.

It’s textbook far-right nationalist populism.

This kind of movement is a cancer that can survive culture wars and ad hominem attacks. But “affordability,” or the lack thereof works like chemo.

When inflation rises (check), living standards drop (housing, healthcare, education, I could go on), and the diehards start to waver (Tucker Carlson, MTG, I could go on), far-right nationalist populism stops looking so enticing.

These movements tend to hit their limits after about a decade. But what happens next depends on whether institutions hold and whether voters show up.

Throw out the Playbook

The Republican Party’s transition towards autocracy and far-right politics in the U.S. is a direct descendant of Orbán’s politics. They share media strategies, consultants, and a common ecosystem. So the fact that JD Vance goes over, jumps on the scale for Orbán as a show of strength, and then flops is significant.

What a week for JD Vance. He flies to Hungary and gets humiliated, flies to Pakistan and tanks Iran peace talks. This guy has the literal kiss of death. Recall, Vance flew in to visit Pope Francis last year and the Pope was dead within 24 hours.

Someone grab the garlic and the wooden stake.

Trump and JD Vance have become liabilities rather than assets. Far-right European leaders have put daylight between them and Trump on the Iran War. We’re seeing it with Giorgia Meloni in Italy, AfD in Germany, and Marine le Pen’s Front National in France.

And look at what happened in Canada. Trump-aligned conservatives were on track to take the election there, until Trump’s tariffs poisoned the well. That swept Prime Minister Mark Carney into office, who came out swinging as the face of a post-Trump world order at Davos.

He showed up like Steve Jobs revealing the new iPhone, only it was an economy that doesn’t need the US and making deals with Qatar and China.

Systems Breakdown

Orbán’s loss shows that these systems are not unbeatable. They’re also not unbreakable, but that part takes work and the votes.

Orbán did major damage, using a supermajority to do a gut job on Hungary’s constitution. When he gained that level of control in 2010, he transformed the courts, electoral system, and institutions.

Sound familiar?

Without a two-thirds majority, it becomes much harder for the new party to unwind those changes in Hungary. We have to overcome the same hurdle here.

Otherwise, it’ll look a lot like how it did after Biden’s election: Democrats technically in power but working against gerrymandered districts and a Trump-friendly Supreme Court.

And look, the new guy, Magyar, he’s no progressive. He’s a center-right figure who used to be part of Orbán’s party. But he’s pro-liberal democracy, he’s anti-Russia, and he’s built a broad coalition that includes progressives. That coalition is key. It shows that defeating authoritarianism requires a big-tent approach.

Buckle Up

If Democrats regain power, they’re looking at a massive cleanup effort. I’m talking BP Oil Spill-meets-Three Mile Island. They’d better be stocking up on Dawn dish soap now.

In the same way Orbán wrote the far-right nationalist populism playbook for Trump, Hungary’s new leaders could provide the instruction manual for the Democrats.

But, frankly, they should not need a semester of study abroad to figure out that we need accountability, now.

Those chickens are roosting abroad. Jair Bolsonaro’s in prison in Brazil for “conspiring against democracy.” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to resign in 2023 after lying to Parliament.

It’s not necessarily the beginning of the end, but it could be the end of the beginning. But success at toppling autocracy is conditional.

People have to vote.

That’s why I can’t stress enough, and I will shout from the rooftops until the midterms and straight through 2028: We need to organize, mobilize, coalition build, and get a massive voter turnout that delivers an undeniable defeat.