Trumpism Is Dying

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Some very good news for democracy

I’m not big on hopium but friends, the spell is breaking. Trumpism is losing.

Not all at once, not cleanly, and not without first leaving wreckage everywhere it touched. But the mystique is fading. The lie at the center of this whole political project — that strongmen are history’s winners, that corruption is strength, that bullying is leadership, that liberal democracy is too weak and decadent to defend itself — is finally colliding with reality. In just the last month, reality hit Trumpism hard.

Start in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán — Donald Trump’s favorite European autocrat, ideological soulmate, and proof-of-concept for how to dismantle a democracy from within — was thrown out after 16 years in power. Orbán is not just another right wing politician but the model for so many other corrupt autocrats. He spent years showing aspiring authoritarians how to pack institutions, demonize dissent, monetize nationalism, and wrap naked corruption in the language of patriotism. He hollowed out democratic norms, turned the state into a patronage machine, aligned himself with Vladimir Putin, and made Hungary synonymous with the kind of “illiberal democracy” that is really just a prettier term for managed decline. This week, Hungarian voters said they had had enough, delivering a landslide to Péter Magyar and ending Orbán’s long grip on power.

That loss matters far beyond Budapest because Orbán was not operating in isolation. He was part of a transnational political ecosystem that connects the American right, European authoritarianism, and Russian interests into one mutually reinforcing project. Trump endorsed him, JD Vance campaigned with him, the Kremlin desperately needed him, and Trumpworld celebrated him. Orbán became the international mascot of the idea that democracy was for suckers and that a clever enough demagogue could loot a country while persuading half the public to cheer. His defeat was a rebuke to the entire Trumpist fantasy that the future belongs to men like him.

https://saltypolitics.substack.com/p/trumpism-is-dying