Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, and I'm sitting in for my good buddy, Tim Miller. I didn't have my pearls today, but I'm going to try this hat for just a minute. Actually, Bill, what do you think of the hat?
Excellent. But you look better in it than Tim Miller. I'm going to just say that for the record. But you can take it off. You can take it off now.
You've made the point. Okay. Well, just because I am sitting in for Tim since he is, nobody works anymore, Bill. No one works anymore. These kids.
Except for us, you know.
Except for us.
I know.
But just because you don't have Tim doesn't mean you don't get Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol's here to join me after a action-packed, news-filled weekend. So many things happened. In fact, Monday hasn't slowed down one bit. We have this morning Donald Trump posting himself as Jesus. He is in a hot war with the Pope. America is now closing itself the Strait of Hormuz.
And most importantly, and where I want to start, is with the big election in Hungary where Viktor Orban yesterday was defeated resoundingly, resoundingly. And for people who maybe at a macro level say, I know Orban's a bad guy and I'm glad he lost, but maybe they don't understand all of the implications, both for Europe and for us.
So I thought, Bill, I'd just turn it over to you and let you set the stage for why yesterday's election was so important.
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Chapter 2: What does Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary signify for authoritarianism?
You can call him Pete.
He's our buddy, you know.
But he was basically a version of a never-Trumper, right? He was sort of a center-right. He used to be in Orban's party, was an actual Orbanist. for a period of time, who then joined the opposition party and began to lead it, that was an interesting wrinkle to me.
Because one of the things that I think people who are looking at this for the first time might not know is they might assume that Magyar is the liberal opposition candidate, but he is not. He's sort of a center-right who also was tough on immigration, but he is somebody who believes in liberal democracy. And so it's not a straightforward question.
analogy to sort of the Democrats rising up in America. So can you talk about that a little?
No, I think that's, as I understand it, also having learned much more about Hungarian politics in the last week, that's very true. But I knew people who were in touch with sort of old-fashioned liberals, good people, admirable people who have been fighting Orban for 10 years in Hungary.
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Chapter 3: How does Bill Kristol perceive the implications of Orban's loss for Europe and the U.S.?
And there was a little touch of Resentment is too strong, but like a little, you know, irony in the fact that he is the leader and he will be now the prime minister of Hungary, president, I guess, of Hungary. And and not one of the sort of people who stood up to Orban the longest. But Magyar certainly broke with Orban and he did so decisively. I think that's really important to say.
So it's a little more like the never Trumpers. I mean, he's more like Liz Cheney in the sense that she was. you know, went along with Trump longer than we did, you know, and didn't break until January 6th.
I mean, I think Orban may be a little more like that, or it would be as if Nikki Haley and Mike Pence had, I was trying to think of a good analogy, you know, had sort of turned against Trump and run against him, but then really stayed against him and become the leader of the opposition instead of, in Nikki Haley's case, endorsing Trump in 2024 and in Pence's case, going off to do whatever, you know, within the Republican Party.
But I mean, one forgets Orban had been a Democrat. Orban, I met Orban back in the late 90s, early 2000s. He was a real star, had been as a very young man of the Hungarian Democratic opposition. After he lost one race to a populist in, I think, 2004, he totally flipped and became what he became, which was embrace the populism, the nativism, and all that sort of stuff.
And then Putin, as Putin was rising too. The left in Hungary deserves a lot of credit for going along with Magyar as the leader. Again, it would be as if the entire Democratic Party had decided to support Liz Cheney or a more outspoken Mike Pence or something in 2024 or 2028, for that matter, or maybe Adam Kinzinger, if you want a slightly less shocking example. And they did.
Magyar is a very talented politician, clearly. And that's also a reminder that just pure talent, you know, and talent, but also a vision of building a movement, not just a party. People I talk to, and we have a piece on the website this morning in Morning Shots by David Baer, who's covered Hungary for us, and has been way ahead of the curve.
He thought Orban was in trouble a year ago when people thought it's impossible. Anyway, David has an excellent piece making the point. Magyar saw himself as leading a social movement. And when you see those videos, it is, right? It's tens of thousands of people in city after city, in small towns, even in Hungary. embracing Magyar.
He channeled a lot of the historic opposition to Russia way back to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which was obviously crushed by the Soviet Union and used some of the chants from that era, some of the slogans from that era to turn against Orban and against Orban's subservience to Putin. So they used social media and, you know,
non-print media, non-judicial media, which they didn't have any access to in Hungary, very, very effectively. So probably a lot of lessons there, both in the sense of Magyar being the leader, but also everyone agreeing to consolidate behind him, which I get. I give the left credit. It was a bitter pill for them to swallow. Magyar didn't. I think he's fine on democracy.
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Chapter 4: What lessons can the U.S. learn from the Hungarian elections?
I mean- I think there's the wind at the back point. I also just think that JVL, our great friend JVL, and I have this talk a lot, and when he's doing dark JVL and he's feeling especially bleak, one of the things he's always hitting me with is, Sarah, how are we going to rebuild after this?
How do we ever get back to something after we've cratered our credibility and we've destroyed so many of these institutions? And by the way, there in Hungary, they did a very similar thing to Doge, right, where they got rid of all their... the people who ran their institutions.
And it's a tough thing to look at what's happening in America and think, well, how do we get back to this thing that we used to be, right? Where we had a clear sense of who we were and our role in the world. And I just think Hungary is a little bit of a slice of hope against that, that you can now, to be fair, I don't want to overstate it, just like you. You
Then we he says he's going to go dismantle many of the illiberal things that that Orban has done. But we'll see. And obviously, America and Hungary are quite different. The impact of our role in the world is deeply different. The fact that we've betrayed our values with Trump is like it has just a much bigger impact on everybody else.
So they're not one to one comparisons, but I should and I'd like it to. It gave me hope that.
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Chapter 5: Who is Peter Magyar and what is his role in Hungarian politics?
What I like about it for America is to see what it means to have people who once voted for Orban, once supported Orban, turn on him aggressively. And to see that there's this sense in America that we are so polarized, and of course we are, that something like this could never happen. But I think history moves on, right? These guys become the old guys.
I mean, I'll just take, just because we're talking about two things here, but Trump... posting a picture of himself today as Jesus, not being held by Jesus, not as the Pope, not earthly figures, which he has done in the past because he is a narcissistic lunatic. But today he posted a picture of himself as Jesus. And the evangelical community is up in arms.
And there is a little bit of me that wants to say, oh, did you notice that he's a terrible person? Is that something that you're just waking up to? Good morning. Welcome to the party, pal.
I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that part of why you're seeing such an enormous backlash against this, this is everywhere today, the fact that Trump did this, and lots of evangelicals who normally are very supportive of Trump are really upset about it.
I don't think that they would be as willing to criticize Trump the way that they are today if Trump weren't flailing to some degree, if people didn't feel like the winds are shifting a bit. And this is what can happen. The winds start to shift. People realize the guy's a lame duck. They realize he's failing at his job.
They realize that the people that they called names going into the last election were correct. And they're starting to move to get on the right side. And that is how things shift. I don't know if you agree with that. I'm just making a statement now.
But yeah, no, totally. And I mean, and sadly, I mean, you've been tracking this very closely. People have moved against Trump. I mean, again, if you want to think of the analogy here, I mean, Orban lost X percentage. I don't know the exact numbers of his supporters. He had been in, I think, 160 percent or something in the 50s, certainly.
In 2022, in the last election, and now this election, he gets maybe more like 40% of the popular vote. It's a little hard to figure that out, actually, for the way that it's very complicated electoral system they have. But anyway, and Trump himself got almost 50% in 2024, and is now at, I don't know, 39% I saw on the CBS YouGov poll, which is a pretty mainstream poll, I'd say.
Not usually a terribly bad one for Trump, actually.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential impacts of recent political events on the future of democracy?
Having your address, phone number, and family members' names hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world and make everyone vulnerable. I'm always thinking about this. I think anyone with a public profile has a lot of this on their mind. But no matter who you are, I think good digital hygiene is super important.
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That's joindeleteme.com slash bulwark, code bulwark. Thanks, Delete Me. Speaking of the 2028 elections, I want to talk about J.D. Vance a little bit because not only did J.D. Vance go campaign for Orban, as we just discussed, so therefore put his stamp all over the defeat, the Trump administration's stamp all over the defeat.
In fact, I was I was gratified to see that it appeared that when he went there. and gave his speech, it actually caused Orban's approval to drop. It actually caused his polling to drop. So J.D. Vance really does seem to have sort of the kiss of death, especially this weekend.
He's having a particularly embarrassing stretch after being somebody who, you know, was going to be like the no more stupid wars, we're never doing these things in the Middle East, now to have to sort of drag Trump's war around with him, number one. Number two, the Orban defeat. And then number three, Trump was like, hey, I'm going to a UFC fight with Marco Rubio. Hey, J.D.
Vance, you go deal with the Iranians and do that negotiating in Pakistan. And, you know, he comes out on, I don't know if it was Saturday morning or it was Friday night, but it was basically like, yeah, no deal. We couldn't get one. Turns out, turns out actually this stuff's hard. Turns out if you just start a war and negotiate later, it gets hard. What did you... make of them sending J.D.
Vance, of the failure of J.D. Vance. And also, this has led us directly to the fact that now the Strait of Hormuz, once again, is completely locked down. And I don't know where things are going this week, but we very well could be in a hot war again any minute.
Well, just to begin with the least important thing, I suppose, which is the going to the cage matches with Rubio. I had a bulwark on Sunday yesterday, Sarah Matthews, our colleague and former deputy press secretary in 2020 to Trump, who therefore knows Trump out there, you know, much better than we do and knows the Trump White House.
It still talks to people who talk to people, to people who are there. I asked her on World Work on Saturday yesterday, did Rubio invite himself to that or how does it work? I mean, does Trump invite you or do you sort of angle for an invitation? And she said, well, people are always angling, of course, to be close to Trump and invite him.
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Chapter 7: What strategies did Magyar use to connect with voters despite media control?
So I just want to get your take. I discussed it at some length with... I think a good conversation with Sarah Matthews, who had real insight, obviously has insight into her and to how that works in the White House. How does the first lady end up giving a speech in the cross hall of the White House, which just to be clear is that's where presidents give major speeches from.
It's where Trump gave his Iran speech from the week before standing at that podium. We've all seen the image. You walk down that red carpet to come to the podium there with a seal of the president on the lectern, which is supposed to be used for the president with all due respect to the first lady.
And then she arranges to give a five and a half minute speech about where would she defend herself against charges of having been, you know, knowing what Epstein was up to and so forth without defending her husband at all. I don't know. What is that?
Chapter 8: How does the American conservative movement relate to Hungary's political landscape?
Just I mean, that's got to be another example of something Trump isn't very happy with and a bit of a meltdown in general in Trump world. I don't know. What do you what do you make of it?
Yeah, I mean, I didn't talk about it with you. JVL and I did talk about it, I think, on Secret. But my general assessment just is like from a communications matter, when you look at that, the obvious thing is, okay, so she's trying to get ahead of something. There's a story that's about to come out. I actually thought it was going to come out this weekend. I assumed it would.
Now, I did see one explanation, or I would say that the explanation that seems to be out there is that her best friend, Melania's longtime best friend, had like her husband is a Trump friend and they got divorced. And so the husband tried to have her deported. So she's kind of in a rage state, ready to tell all. Now that may or may not be true.
I don't know, but something there is, you don't do something like that. without, especially one of the things that seems so strange about it is it doesn't, it's not clear it was sanctioned by Trump or that Trump even knew it was going to happen.
And I didn't hear what Sarah Matthews said about the actual internal machinations, but the level of tight control around narratives like that from Trump, from the White House, like that is a rogue move. So you got to think something else is coming. You know, now he's fired Bondi. He's looking for a new person in that role. I mean, look,
You want to be so careful about saying the walls are closing in, the wheels are coming off. You know, you think about Orban. I thought a lot about this with Orban with like 16 years he was there. Like there were clearly times when people thought that. You can't beat it, right? There's no way. But, you know, time goes on and people do get tired and events do matter.
Like, Joe Biden lost for a lot of reasons, but one of them, and then Kamala Harris, one of them was just where inflation was and people feeling, in fact, that was a major one. And so, like, I want people to not lose hope that nothing can change because I do think... whether it's Trump's age, which is a real issue, right? For I think he's lost a step. Like he's not the same person.
He's the same person in the sense that he's evil and corrupt, but he's not the same person in that he is as good at deflecting it, as good at controlling the narrative as he once was. And at some point, the wheels can come off. And this feels as close as we've been in a long time.
Yeah, and on the Biden point, I do think in 2020, Mayweather would have been the right person because people wanted some reassurance and stability and so forth. So the almost 80-year-old, I guess he was late 70s and, you know, former vice president for eight years was kind of the right person to nominate and also a moderate Democrat, the easiest to win, but not the right person for 24, obviously.
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