This article explores the similarities between President Trump's approach to power and that of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, drawing parallels between their agendas and tactics. Both leaders have been criticized for their anti-democratic methods and their efforts to consolidate power within their respective countries.
Hours before President Trump was sworn in to begin his second term, promising a “golden age” for America, the leader of a Central European country was describing the years ahead in strikingly similar terms. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Trump 's return would usher in Hungary 's own “golden age” and mark the “collapse” of liberal democracy. The messaging overlap was no surprise. Orban 's strongman style has long served as an inspiration for U.S.
conservatives, who have looked at Hungary as a possible model for a right-wing America with less immigration, fewer regulations and the removal of democratic constraints they see as unwieldy or inconvenient. Orban has formed a close bond with Trump and has made multiple visits to the president’s Florida resort. The prime minister recently praised Trump's unilateral outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine. During one of last year’s U.S. presidential debates, Trump praised Orban as “a strong man. He’s a tough person.” Now, with Trump back in office since Jan. 20, he is testing the limits of presidential power in a way that is drawing comparisons to the anti-democratic methods employed by Orban and other autocrats. Orban has used state power to crush rivals, remake the judiciary and game elections to make it much harder to oust his party. He has cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, the media and civic organizations. Although the two men and political systems are different, there are striking parallels between what Orban has achieved in Hungary and Trump’s agenda and approach for his second term. After becoming prime minister in 1998, Orban suffered an unexpected electoral defeat four years later. He then swore he “would never lose again” and began planning the political transformation of Hungary, said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton professor who worked at Hungary’s Constitutional Court in the 1990s. While he was out of power, Orban and his allies created a legal framework to consolidate authority. It was swiftly implemented after Orban’s Fidesz party swept to victory with a two-thirds majority in 2010. “It wasn’t called Project 2025,” Scheppele added, referring to the controversial conservative blueprint for Trump's second term that has been reflected in many of the president's early actions. “It might have been called Project 2010.” The European Parliament has declared Orban's Hungary an “electoral autocracy.” Upon returning to office with a Republican majority in Congress, Trump issued a blizzard of executive orders seeking to expand the power of the presidency and test the country's system of checks and balances. He has continued to make changes to the government without consulting Congress. The American Bar Assn. issued a statement warning that many of the Trump administration's actions are “contrary to the rule of law.” The most consequential of Fidesz’s early actions was cracking down on judicial independence. In 2012, Orban’s government lowered the mandatory judicial retirement age, resulting in the termination of nearly 300 senior judges. Responsibility for filling the positions was vested in a single political appointee — the spouse of a Fidesz founder. “It took three years and it was all over,” Scheppele said. “As long as he had the highest court in his pocket, he could get away with a lot.” While Trump and Republicans cannot unilaterally change the face of the judiciary, the parallels with Orban are clear. Republicans have long sought a conservative judiciary, and Trump embraced that priority when he first became president in 2017. In his first term, Trump nominated three of the U.S. Supreme Court's current nine members, giving conservatives a supermajority that last year shielded the Republican from criminal prosecution for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump has moved to remake the U.S. Department of Justice after having spoken repeatedly about using it to go after his critics and those who investigated him. He has fired prosecutors who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and moved to purge the FBI. His administration has criticized judges who have temporarily halted some of its actions, with some in power even suggesting at one point that unfavorable decisions could be defied. Still, Trump's power over the judicial branch is not absolute. Many Trump-appointed judges showed independence in 2020, rebuffing his lawsuits to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The U.S. court system also is larger than Hungary's and full of judges appointed by previous presidents, including Biden. Orban’s first moves after regaining power were rewriting Hungary’s constitution and overhauling election laws in a way that ensured his party would have a greater proportion of its own lawmakers in the legislature. Due partly to those changes, Orban’s party has won a two-thirds majority in every election since 2010 while receiving as little as 44% of the vot
TRUMP ORBAN HUNGARY DEMOCRACY AUTOCRACY JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE ELECTIONS EXECUTIVE ORDERS
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