But America isn’t Hungary
All of this was predictable. Project 2025 laid out the majority of the actions we’ve seen unfolding.
The police state tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the outright abuse of due process and civil liberties. President Donald Trump’s inane tariffs, which have the economy teetering on the edge, even though the effects are only starting to be felt. The investigations and persecutions of Trump’s enemies. His firing of anyone whose job it is to make independent, apolitical judgements, including a Federal Reserve governor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, career Justice Department and FBI officials, scientists and other experts throughout the federal government. Their replacement by hacks and quacks. Trump’s intimidation of universities, corporations and law firms by threatening to withhold government research funding. His assaults on the press, which have included pressuring media companies, filing frivolous lawsuits and harassing journalists.
And now there’s Jimmy Kimmel. The late-night talk show host’s indefinite suspension by ABC and Disney marks an escalation in what is turning into a full-blown assault by the administration on the First Amendment.
It’s one thing to have a hissy fit over what someone said on television, and to initiate boycotts and consumer complaints so their employers will fire them. That happens all the time. But a government official, in this case Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, openly threatening a corporation with retaliation if they refuse to silence political speech is new.
Trump, of course, has a track record. In December 2024, ABC agreed to settle a defamation suit the president brought against the network for $15 million. And in July, CBS and Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement for a lawsuit Trump had filed. (Four months earlier, the company also announced it was canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” who had come under fire from the president.) Trump brought a $15 billion libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal in July, and on Sept. 15 he filed a $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times (which was dismissed by a federal judge four days later). In at least two instances — with CBS and Paramount, and now with ABC and Disney — the media companies were seeking approval for mega-mergers from the FCC, and the administration appeared to strong-arm the companies with threats that were barely more sophisticated than “nice little merger you have here, be a shame if anything happened to it.”
In all of this — the media intimidation, the extremist policies — Trump has modeled his actions on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose far-right government is often referred to as a “soft autocracy.” Orbán had been a darling of the American right for some time, appearing at Conservative Political Action Conference gatherings and even hosting them in Budapest. Everyone from Steve Bannon to Tucker Carlson has made pilgrimages to Hungary to extol the virtues of the country’s clean cities and traditional society, which they attributed to the prime minister’s unabashed xenophobia and powerful grip on country’s cultural and democratic institutions.
Orbán, though, didn’t achieve that autocratic nirvana overnight. After a rough start in politics, he made a comeback having completely reinvented himself as a populist. Orbán had a lot of support from the electorate, but he understood he needed to be subtle about many of the changes he was making — and he knew it was imperative for the population to be economically secure. So he took his time, slowly rolling out his plan to overhaul Hungary’s universities, take over the media and “reform” the legal system and the constitution. Over time, most of the intellectual opposition left the country.
Orbán’s co-opting of the media was his masterstroke — and it has succeeded in keeping the majority of Hungarians in his camp for a long time. CNN’s Brian Stelter spoke with Gábor Scheiring, a former member of the Hungarian parliament, who told him that “Orbán weakened public broadcasting, muzzled independent media through ‘autocratic carrots and sticks,’ and incentivized owners to fall in line.” Scheiring observed “a key underlying story is that media owners, both foreign and domestic, largely capitulated individually rather than mounting collective resistance, which enabled Orbán’s systematic capture strategy.”
The prime minister also managed to rig the system by permitting loyalists to buy up media companies, leaving virtually no outlet that isn’t essentially part of his coalition.
Orbán is a strongman, but he’s much more sophisticated in how he applies his dictatorial powers. His strategy has been to work systematically, and with patience, to keep the people on his side. The prime minister understands that, in the modern world, deploying soldiers to cities and having masked thugs abduct people off the streets is not a good look. This is where Trump has diverged from the Orbán model. The president is a one-man wrecking crew, leaving carnage everywhere as he rushes through the Project 2025 agenda.
Orbán’s success has also largely depended on Hungary’s fairly stable economy, which benefited from its European Union membership during a prosperous period. For the first time in 15 years, he is now facing some headwinds. The economy is faltering, and many Hungarians seem restless for change. Although Orbán managed to defang much of his government’s traditional opposition, he now faces what appears to be a formidable challenger in the form of Péter Magyar, a supporter-turned-critic who is currently a member of the European Parliament.
Most people who study Orbánism make it clear that what he achieved was made possible, in large part, by the fact that Hungary is a small country where it’s easier to centralize power than in a large global superpower like the U.S. Still, it’s noteworthy just how closely the second Trump administration is hewing to the Orbán model and how similarly the institutions are responding so far.
MAGA’s reign, however, may not be quite as sure as they assume. Trump and his accomplices are drunk with power — and they are stuck in the past. They are seemingly unaware that a 21st century autocracy is best achieved with cunning and finesse. But the famously impatient Trump, at least in his second term, is motivated by instant gratification and a desire to dominate. As fast as he is achieving his authoritarian goals, he may lose it all just as quickly. America isn’t Hungary — and Donald Trump isn’t Viktor Orbán.
