America Low Priority
By 
For countless Americans under Trump, the offer is austerity and affordability — major cuts to healthcare and other social services, soaring prices as the direct result of the president’s policies. But don’t worry — Trump is coming to the rescue…of his favorite Central European kleptocracy:
sorry Pam we need your medicare money to bail out Chud Wakanda https://t.co/u5Thd8OHtJ— Kharg Island Margaritaville (@canderaid) April 10, 2026
I don’t want to be unduly optimistic, particularly given how corrupt and anti-democratic the Orban regime is, but it would be particularly satisfying if Trump and Vance’s clumsy interventions put the opposition over the top:
It’s not a big place, but it’s symbolic. It is a role model for right-wing authoritarians everywhere. It still formally has the institutions of democracy, but has for the past 16 years been a one party state — ruled by a right-wing authoritarian ethno-nationalist regime that enforces its will partly by rigging elections, partly through an extensive system of crony capitalism that rewards its friends and punishes its enemies.
In other words, it’s a MAGA kind of place. It’s what they would like to do to the United States, although with less sophistication and more brutality.
Donald Trump has been frantically trying to keep Viktor Orban in power, largely in ways that demonstrate that he really doesn’t understand how the world views him. Sending JD Vance to campaign for Orban is not helpful to Orban. It’s a boost to the opposition. Spewing frantically on Truth Social about how important it is that Orban win is, again, a gift to the Hungarian opposition.
The system is still very rigged in Hungary, but there’s pretty good reason to hope that the popular wave against Orban and Fidesz is so large that it will sweep away all of the rigging that they’ve imposed to try and keep themselves in power.
We’ll all be watching the polls eagerly tomorrow. What struck me, however, as something new is that lately, at the very end, Trump is now saying, oh, elect Orban and I will help you out economically. And just yesterday, he put up a post saying that if Orban is re-elected, that the Economic Might of the United States will come in to aid Hungary and its well-deserved prosperity and all of that.
Which is interesting because it’s an illustration of the megalomania, the delusions of grandeur that really afflict the current U.S. administration, a complete inability to have a sense of the limits of American power.
Further updates from our elections specialist shortly!