Election loss for Hungarian Prime Minister Orbn has ripple effects for Trump, US conservatives

[Dulcinea]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The big election over the weekend was in a small European country nearly half a world away from Washington, but the defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has significant reverberations in the United States.

That’s because President Donald Trump and many U.S. conservatives have long embraced Orbán, who has become an icon among the global right for his anti-immigrant stance. The American president’s agenda has striking parallels with the way the Hungarian leader used the levers of government to tilt the media, judiciary and electoral system to keep his party in power for 16 years.

Trump supported Orbán’s reelection bid and even dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Budapest last week — in the midst of the Iran war — to stump for the incumbent.

Orbán’s loss was a reminder of how the war has diminished Trump’s ability to help allied politicians overseas, as well as of the limited ability of leaders to use their power to tilt voting in their direction in an age of worldwide discontent over incumbents of all ideological stripes.

https://apnews.com/article/orban-hungary-election-trump-republicans-6be613a3ac64c5efdb94b31be4bf18e6

[BigmanPigman]

1. Orban is a saint compared to tRump....

He had the decency to admit defeat and acknowledge it. The fucking moron would NEVER do that.

[Skittles]

3. I've been suspicious but....

that would seem to be the case

[Skittles]

2. to be fair, it's not just the war that "diminished" Trump

he's a vile POS in EVERY fucking way

[BigmanPigman]

4. I just re-watched The Bad Seed and

the film is basically about "nature vs nurture" and if someone can be born as a psychopath. While I was watching it tRump came to mind. I know his dad was an ass and his mother wasn't too nurturing but I think he is a natural, born psychopath. His siblings didn't turn out to be insane like he is.

[Skittles]

5. hard to say

I remember reading about Dubya - when he was a young boy his baby sister Robin, I think she was 3 - died of leukemia, and his parents never really even spoke about her death. She was there one day and then gone forever. To be fair, Bush Sr and Barbara received very bad advice regarding how to handle the situation and maybe that wasn't uncommon back then. But it left Dubya utterly bewildered, and I always wondered if that altered his personality into the asshole he became.

Trump's parents sounded like pieces of work too, and certainly not all kids react the same. Who knows. Sucks for America, for sure, and it doesn't say much about voters that they cannot detect these huge defects in character.

[DFW]

6. The article glosses over one major detail

Orbán muzzled and practically controlled the Hungarian press. Very much like what Putin has done in Russia. It is what Trump's allies, especially the Ellisons, only wish they could accomplish here. For that matter, they are well on their way, having dismantled CBS News, and are more than halfway there in making CNN into Fox Lite.

The fact that the Hungarians overwhelmingly rejected Orbán is an event of 1956 proportions with a vastly different outcome. Orbán may have been contemplating some cheating in the case of manipulating a close election result against him to one in his favor. But this was a tidal wave of voters that was impossible to deny. We do not have it so easy. The 2020 election was a tidal wave of anti-Trump voters, and Biden still only barely got in. In 2016, a victory margin of 3 million voters was not propitiously enough distributed to put Hillary Clinton into her well-deserved seat in the Oval Office. The Hungarian election may only serve to warn the Republicans what methods of electoral fraud they need to improve upon. Caveat Americanus.

[RussBLib]

7. this is the best news in weeks, months

To see Orbán go down was a thing of beauty. No dictator can last forever. I saw one interview with a Hungarian and he said that he'd been waiting for 16 years for this to happen. Can you imagine? 16 years? That's some real patience. Do Americans have that kind of patience? Fuck no! We cannot let Trump get away with dismantling everything a la Orbán.

https://russblib.blogspot.com