The first 100 days of Trump’s second term have come to an end… so, what comes next? Overseas, Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has transformed his country into electoral autocracy using tactics that bear a striking resemblance to those currently playing out in Trump’s America. To close out the Trumpland series, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner travels to Hungary and speaks with lawyers, journalists, politicians, and advocates on the ground who offer important lessons for America while they continue to fight for democracy in their own country.
Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
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Viktor Orbán: I am an old-fashioned freedom fighter, the leader of a country that is under the siege of progressive liberals day by day.
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Alex Wagner: In 2022, CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, invited Hungarian Prime Minister and autocrat, Viktor Orbán, to speak in Dallas.
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Viktor Orbán: In Hungary, we had to build not just a physical wall on our borders and the financial wall around our families, but the legal wall around our children to protect them from the gender ideology that targets them.
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Alex Wagner: It was a shocking moment. An autocrat was invited and essentially honored at one of the country’s most well-known conservative gatherings. Orbán is the longest serving prime minister in Europe. He describes his governance as illiberal democracy, though a lot of people just call it a dictatorship. Orbán’s hard line policies extend to law and order, immigration, purges of so-called gender ideology and wokeness in schools, and repression of minorities, LGBTQ communities, and the press.
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Viktor Orbán: I am here to tell you that our values, the nation, Christian roots, and family can be successful in the political battlefield. Perhaps our story can help you keep America great.
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Alex Wagner: Maybe not that surprisingly, Donald Trump is a fan of Viktor Orbán’s work. Last year, giving the keynote address at CPAC, Trump made his admiration public.
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Donald Trump: Viktor Orbán is somebody I respect greatly. A lot of people respect him. Tough guy, smart guy.
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Alex Wagner: Beyond the compliments and invites to Mar-A-Lago, there’s the irrefutable connection between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his brand of authoritarianism and President Donald Trump and his desire for authoritarianism. Just like Orbán, Trump is seeking to remake America’s political system, to consolidate executive power and silence dissent and get really rich, or at least have his family and friends get really rich.
Given these extraordinary parallels between what’s happened in Hungary and what is happening in America, we thought that the time was right to take a trip (FOREIGN LANGUAGE) and see for ourselves.
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Unknown: Welcome to the airport of Budapest. Please remain seated.
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Alex Wagner: As president Trump rounds out his first one hundred days in office and Trumpland with Alex Wagner comes to a conclusion, we are in Hungary to speak with the people fighting against autocracy and for democracy.
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Unknown: We are screaming. We are yelling to set the screen.
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Alex Wagner: And we learn some important lessons about America and its near future from Hungary and its recent past.
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Unknown: It really takes on a personal aspect. So how resilient our people? And what we’ve seen in Hungary is that there is resilience.
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Alex Wagner: Chapter one, civil unrest. So we landed in Budapest this afternoon. I think we have a sum total of 17 minutes of sleep between the five of us. It’s a gorgeous day. Budapest has 1.6 million people. It’s the tenth most populous city in the European Union. Karoly Silagi (ph) was our fixer on the ground, and he was also our best source for all kinds of questions.
Karoly Silagi (ph): We are heading westwards now, so towards the Buddha side of the town, which is the more affluent, more leafy side.
People tend to say that if you want to have a successful life, then you are living on the Buddhist side. And if you want to have a good job, then, you have an employment on the Pest side.
Alex Wagner: We’re staying on the Pest side. Right?
Karoly Silagi (ph): Yes. We are.
Alex Wagner: Well, I guess that means we’re doing a good job.
Karoly Silagi (ph): Exactly.
Alex Wagner: After the fall of the Soviet Union, Hungary transitioned into a democratic parliamentary system in 1989, making it one of the youngest democracies in the world. And shortly after that, Viktor Orbán came onto the scene.
Like Trump in the 1980s, Orbán identified as somewhat of a liberal. Following Hungary’s transition to a multi-party democracy, in 1990, Orbán was elected to parliament. A few years in though, Orbán’s politics took a right turn, and he brought his party, known by the acronym Fidesz with him.
Five years after this conservative transformation, in 1998, Orbán was elected prime minister. Also like Trump, Orbán initially held power for only four years. He lost in the 2002 election. But again, like Trump, Orbán did not go quietly into the night after his defeat. Instead, he spent years criticizing Hungary’s economy, stoking public discontent with the party in power, and accusing rivals of election fraud. Sound familiar?
In 2010, Orbán’s Fidesz party swept the elections, and Orbán has remained in power ever since, consolidating more and more power.
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Unknown: Hungary’s Authoritarian Leader, Viktor Orbán, won the country’s parliamentary elections, clinching a fourth consecutive term.
Unknown: Dear friends, this victory may well be remembered till the end of our lives.
Unknown: He’s going to get two thirds of the seats in the Hungarian parliament, which means he not only has a fourth consecutive term in office, but he’s going to be able to continue to change the Hungarian Constitution to benefit himself, someone who is not a fan of —
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Alex Wagner: In the early days of Orbán’s second stint as prime minister, he moved at breakneck speed. He fired the heads of government oversight agencies. He attacked the courts. He went after the media, and he consolidated power and placed vast amounts of it in the hands of unelected and very rich allies. Like Lajos Simicska, Orbán’s friend, who was once the richest person in Hungary and who led a DOGE-like takeover of the Hungarian government, one that was sanctioned by Orbán. Orbán’s family also started to amass huge amounts of wealth. According to Bloomberg, Orbán’s son-in-law scored lucrative government contracts and tax breaks for his hotel and tourism businesses, making him a multimillionaire. Orbán and his allies have long denied allegations of corruption, chalking up independent reporting on the matter as lies and fake news.
But as the corruption grew, Orbán’s policies went further and further to the right. In 2015, he built a militarized border wall and expelled asylum seekers during the European refugee crisis. By 2021, Hungary had passed a law banning LGBTQ plus topics in schools, something that, by the way, at least one source believes influenced Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill in 2022. And while all of that helps explain why Hungary could very well be a template for America’s shift towards autocracy, Hungary is also going through a pretty interesting political moment right now.
Karoly Silagi (ph): If you look on the right, you see the police watch cars.
Alex Wagner: Yes, there.
Karoly Silagi (ph): And on the left, you see the crowds.
Alex Wagner: Yes, there’s the police.
Karoly Silagi (ph): And police are trying to keep them on the pavement.
Alex Wagner: Wow. There are a lot of police cars. For the last six weeks, protesters have been meeting on the streets of Budapest every Tuesday. On April 14, the Hungarian parliament approved a constitutional amendment to ban pride celebrations and to use facial recognition technology to track down anyone who defies government orders. And while these Tuesday protests are ostensibly about pride, they are very clearly about a lot more than that. They are, in many ways, a steam valve, allowing citizens to express their anger and discontent with Viktor Orbán and his entire party. What does that mean?
Karoly Silagi (ph): It’s literally dirty Fidesz.
Alex Wagner: Dirty Fidesz.
Karoly Silagi (ph): Yes.
Alex Wagner: Okay. So, they’re chanting dirty Fidesz, which is Orbán’s party. The protest we attend begins at 5 p.m. local time on Ferenciek Square, which is framed by cafes and beautiful old buildings on the Pest side of the Elizabeth Bridge. There are hundreds of riot police in black uniforms and scarlet berets standing in formation across the street from the protesters. By 6 p.m., the protesters have gathered in force and are filling the square with energy and some very creative signs.
Karoly Silagi (ph): There’s a O1G that stands for Orbán is a sperm.
Alex Wagner: Okay.
Karoly Silagi (ph): Sorry about that.
Alex Wagner: No. It’s okay.
Karoly Silagi (ph): Shall I beep it out?
Alex Wagner: No. No. No. That’s good to know. Hungary is a dictatorship. Orbán is a sperm. We speak to a man holding an orange and green sign that says, you’re protecting criminals. So is this your first time coming out to protest this?
Unknown: No. I’m protesting since 15 years. So.
Alex Wagner: Wow. So you’ve been opposed too.
Unknown: Since, the Orbán government is ruining our democracy. And this is what’s happening in the U.S. right now, so you should be worried about your status as well.
Alex Wagner: Márton Tompos is a 36-year-old member of parliament who some people have dubbed the Hungarian AOC. He’s one of the leaders of the Momentum Movement Party, one of the organizers of these weekly protests. What’s the sort of mood of the crowd in these last several weeks?
Márton Tompos: It’s a mix. There are people, very young people who have their first protest experience in their lives. There are veterans who have been doing this for one and a half decades. And, they are like us, politicians who this is our job. We have to be here. So it’s a mixed group, but we are united feeling that, yes, it’s can’t go any further like this.
Alex Wagner: Do you feel heartened by this? Do you feel, you know, like this is making a difference?
Márton Tompos: Next year is going to be my tenth year in politics. And this is the first time it actually feel like that those layers of society who have been just sitting in their couch or just saying that I can’t do anything actually feels like they stood up and said it’s enough.
Unknown: Oh, there’s some smoke happening. It’s cool.
Unknown: You know what?
Alex Wagner: A few minutes after we speak with Tompos, we see him holding a bright purple smoke bomb, guiding the crowd towards the Liberty Bridge. It’s a different bridge, an iron bridge painted bright green and one that connects Buda and Pest and where protesters are not authorized to assemble. So the police basically stopped protesters from crossing the street. So someone from the Momentum opposition party in government, basically using a purple smoke bomb is leading the protest to a different area. Basically, presumably, so that they can actually protest rather than just stand on the side of the street where all the riot police are in place. So, it’s kind of a kinetic environment, but you can just see there’s, like, a ton of energy. Soon after arriving at this bridge, a squadron of riot police show up, tear gas canisters at the ready. They slowly make their way to the center of the bridge where most of the protesters are gathered. Some cops hold small camcorders, pointing them at the faces of protesters on the bridges. It’s unclear why, but it makes people uneasy. After about an hour, the protesters are forced to clear the bridge, and despite the intimidating police presence, tensions don’t boil over. At least, not this time, because there will be another protest next week, and probably the week after that, until something changes.
What brought you guys out here? Why did you come to the protest?
Unknown: Because they are trying to limit our rights, and they are trying to ban our existence here.
Alex Wagner: Do you think that people who are not here are paying attention to what’s going on?
Unknown: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Do you think this raises awareness?
Unknown: Yes. I think they do. But they can’t not pay attention because we are here in the streets. We are screaming. We are yelling to set a screen. Because this this is not freedom. This is not democracy what they are doing right now.
Alex Wagner: You know, we’re in America, and we have Trump who is a big fan of Orbán.
Unknown: Yes. I know. Yes. They’re besties.
Alex Wagner: Yes. Well, and now there’s a question about whether Americans need to be doing more of this kind of protest —
Unknown: Definitely. Yes.
Alex Wagner: — to raise awareness. Do you think it will make a difference? Do you think things will change?
Unknown: I think, yes.
Alex Wagner: You do?
Unknown: I may be naive, but I have, I still have hope in humanity.
Alex Wagner: That’s good.
Unknown: I still hope that we can change this. We are young. We are here, and we don’t want this. We want change. We want democracy, what they promised us. We want the future they promised us.
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Alex Wagner: We’ll be right back. Chapter two, corruption. Look at these flowers.
Sandor Lederer: Flowers are still growing. Right?
Alex Wagner: I know. Exactly. It is a near perfect Wednesday morning in Budapest. Spring is in the air. The sun is out. There are people outside in cafes drinking tea and coffee. I meet up with Sandor Lederer at his office, tucked away in a relatively quiet neighborhood before we walk to a nearby park to talk about what it is like to live day to day under an authoritarian regime.
Lederer tracks corruption in Hungary. His group is called K-Monitor. And the corruption he has found is staggering. But it’s hard to square the reality of what’s happening at the hands of Orbán’s government with the idyllic setting in which it’s all unfolding. Autocracies, after all, are not believed to be tourist friendly.
Lederer believes this is a feature, not a bug, of 21st century authoritarianism.
Sandor Lederer: The difference between how dictatorships looked like 50 years ago and how authoritarian look like now, they don’t want to oppress people. They build nice cities, they look from the outside as a totally okay place. So, all these things simply are invisible. And also, if you just pass the streets here in Budapest, you see an old, 19th century city, some happy people, some less happy people, cafes, but it’s everything is okay.
Alex Wagner: Yes, it’s lovely. Lederer cofounded K-Monitor in 2007. Their group published more than 50,000 articles about corruption. In 2023, K-Monitor revealed that government officials were not declaring their assets properly, which prompted key changes in reporting requirements. They also reported on Lorinc Meszaros, Orbán’s childhood friend who increased his wealth by 50 percent just last year and is now the wealthiest man in Hungary. The goal of K-Monitor is to improve transparency and accountability, but also to strengthen the rule of law.
Lederer offered to give us a tour of K-Monitor’s office, which sits inside a hundred-year-old building that features not one, but two very ornate wrought iron staircases. But paint is also chipping off the walls. There are very clearly signs of age and decay. What’s the story of the building? How old is it?
Sandor Lederer: It’s a bit over a hundred years old.
Alex Wagner: Okay.
Sandor Lederer: And, we saw a lot of nice buildings such as this torn down because there was a real estate corruption going on in this district, and that was kind of the motivation to do something about it. And —
Alex Wagner: We spoke in the hallway outside of the K-Monitor office, and Lederer explained how corruption changed in Hungary once Viktor Orbán took power in 2010.
Sandor Lederer: The biggest difference, I think, compared to corruption before Orbán, that corruption was much less centralized. And I think what Orbán had in mind that corruption becomes kind of an essential ways of transforming his political power into economic power, cultural power, things that he can use to kind of keep power even if he would lose political power. So he embed himself in the whole country in much deeper structures than what you have if you’re simply on government and with an independent administration and you just, you know, do policy stuff as normally in democracies the kind of the main purpose of governing.
And their project, which is lasting for 15 years now, was kind of restructuring the whole country, dismantling checks and balances in order that no one can really stop them.
Alex Wagner: Let’s talk about the corruption in terms of business and personal enrichment. Orbán has effectively state actors in the form of his cronies, his allies, his friends, who are now sitting atop these massive fortunes. Can you explain how that happened?
Sandor Lederer: So there are a couple of vehicles of corruption that they use. One is public procurement. These procurements, when the government buys services, goods, or constructs roads, these are given more often than not to companies that are kind of aligned with the government. Then you have let’s say biased legislation where legislation is changed in a way that it favors companies or certain companies benefit from it or certain companies get exceptions so they don’t need to follow certain rules when doing a big construction. Let’s say environmental protection is just not taken into consideration anymore. But I would say public procurement was or is one of the biggest ones because around a 10 percent of the GDP of the country is spent through this. So it’s enormous amount of money and it’s very easy to overprice, to exclude certain bidders so you limit competition and with that, you know, they get richer and richer. So let’s say the prime minister’s son-in-law bought real estate and became a big player in the hospitality industry. So he now has hotels and with this, the whole machinery becomes self-sustainable because you need much less government money. From a certain point on, you have the customers paying. So this is the machinery of using government money to become big and then acquire more and more of the economy.
Alex Wagner: I mean, broadly speaking, the kleptocracy kind of was the motivating factor behind the autocracy. I mean, it’s sort of a chicken and the egg scenario, but has the whole game here always been personal enrichment? Is that why there’s the consolidation of power?
Sandor Lederer: Probably it differs when you look at certain actors. I don’t know if Orbán as a person, is that much interested in wealth for the sake of luxury. I’m not sure actually. I think he needs the wealth in order to have control. So in this regard it’s closer to Putin how he needed to become not only the president of Russia but kind of the biggest oligarch. And this is what happened here as well that the prime minister who officially doesn’t have any wealth is kind of the richest person because if you look at his school friend who is actually the richest person and became this person in 10 years approximately. Very strange. His son-in-law, the 15th richest person in the country, also very quickly and then more and more actors whom, you know, you don’t even remember the name because it’s not worth, but building up this network around him. And I think it’s more about power for Orbán and for many actors. It’s about personal enrichment because they have through this, through participating in these deals, also the chance to make them richer. So it it’s a balance, I would say. But for Orbán, I think it’s mainly about power.
Alex Wagner: Power. Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz, has denied that he directly profits off his family’s power. He previously told a Hungarian media outlet that the success of his business, quote, “is mainly due to the fact that I work with a good team.”
In terms of the personal enrichment piece, we in the United States, we have a president in charge whose vice advisor, if not vice president, is Elon Musk, right, who’s now, you know, one of the world’s wealthiest men in charge of re envisioning the entire federal government. When you hear about the relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump or the relationship between Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who is getting millions of dollars from outside investments, some people think just because of his proximity to power and his proximity to Trump. Does that give you visions of what’s happening in Hungary?
Sandor Lederer: Yes. I mean, it reminds me on this kind of kleptocracy and, also the whole involvement of family nepotism that we have here, of course, in a much larger scale. So it’s even more scary to see this happening in the U.S. But I think the whole idea of narrow circle of the elite kind of grabbing more and more power and excluding others from either holding them to account or having part in that power, having a say about political decisions, that’s a very similar mindset I would say.
Alex Wagner: I’m thinking of the tariff war that our president has started and the degree to which he now has big CEOs from multinational corporations or just national corporations coming to beg him for exemptions. And to me, that suggests a cronyism and a back channel to the presidency, a favoritism that is absolutely the kind of corruption you see in a place like Hungary. Do you see it the same way?
Sandor Lederer: I think the Hungarian system is somewhat closer to Russia because you have most of the oligarchs and the influential people are totally dependent on Orbán. So, it’s him pulling the strings. And the oligarchs themselves without Orbán’s will are just unable to move. Where I believe in the U.S., you have a lot of big economic actors who were there before who don’t owe their wealth to Trump.
Alex Wagner: Right.
Sandor Lederer: But they want to sustain it or grow it. But definitely the way U.S. politics looks now from our perspective is like a government full of conflicts of interest when you see how close let’s say the oligarchy and those in leading political positions are.
Alex Wagner: You’re investigating corruption in Hungary and I just wonder how difficult is that job? I mean, do you worry about, you know, one day just being shut down by the government?
Sandor Lederer: I think in terms of the operations there is another challenges if people get tired from doing what they do after so many years. So this is why we decided at some point that besides let’s say the exposure of corruption, we need to invest more into building alternatives. And for us this meant working with local governments where these are much more independent bodies than the state. You find mayors, you find council members who really want to do something good. And with them you can kind of build pockets of democracy, transparency, where you experiment how normal governance would look like. And also that citizens have this contrast that they see, wow, this is how my local government works, and this is how the state works. What a difference.
Alex Wagner: That all is, I think, so relevant to an American audience because on one hand, people are just inundated with negative news, stories of corruption, kleptocracy, feeling like the entire country is gone to hell, and there’s no alternative. And what you’re saying is it is equally important to show people the alternative, to show them that there can be a functioning government that’s accountable to the people, and that effectively like all is not lost.
Sandor Lederer: Exactly. So you shouldn’t rely entirely on the government and I think, you know, this kind of self-organization or turning to the local government keeps you working for something where you can have hope that there is a chance to change. So if you look at Orbán’s power, it’s not because he’s such a brilliant prime minister in terms of policies and governance. It’s because he never really had an alternative, but if you look at the state of this country you see the effects of this corrupt governance. I mean, our health care system is in a miserable state, the education system is in a very bad state. If you compare our country’s economic growth to the countries in the region, it’s lagging behind. So if you would evaluate him by objective terms, you would see that —
Alex Wagner: He’s weak.
Sandor Lederer: Yes, he’s weak.
Alex Wagner: Are you optimistic about Hungary right now?
Sandor Lederer: I’m generally optimistic.
Alex Wagner: Really?
Sandor Lederer: Otherwise, I wouldn’t do that. I think, sometimes you will hit rock bottom or there are difficult periods, but I think overall, if you look at our history, at some point we managed to do better. And I think now we need to kind of survive and make use of this rather negative period. But if we give up, who will do the job if not us? Right?
Alex Wagner: What advice do you have to an American audience? It’s obviously dealing with, you know, as you say, the structure of the country. Its institutions are different, but there seem to be so many parallels between what’s happened here in the last 15 years and what we’re sort of dealing with right now in the U.S.
Sandor Lederer: I think it won’t last forever, and prepare for what’s coming afterwards, and try to remain sane and take care of yourself and, of course, try to make it as short as possible in order not to spend your entire life in a regime or government that you hate or you don’t want to be with.
Alex Wagner: Okay.
Sandor Lederer: It’s complicated.
Alex Wagner: Yes. Sure is.
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Alex Wagner: We’re going to take a short break. And when we come back, Orbán’s attempt to destroy a free press. Chapter three, the media. One hallmark of authoritarianism, one thing you can reliably count on, are attacks against the free press. In Hungary, according to the Associated Press, Prime Minister Orbán has created an almost Orwellian environment where the government weaponizes control of a majority of news outlets to limit Hungarians’ decisions. One of the main ways Orbán has done this is through a network of oligarchs. Orbán’s wealthiest allies have purchased the vast majority of Hungarian news outlets. As owners of the country’s mainstream media, these oligarchs can forcibly change, cripple, or just shut down organizations that report the truth and thereby threaten Orbán’s power.
For example, in 2016, Hungary’s oldest daily newspaper, the equivalent to an institution like the New York Times, it abruptly shut down after it was bought by a wealthy businessman with ties to Orbán. In 2020, nearly the entire staff of Hungary’s largest online news site, Index, resigned en masse after its editor in chief was fired for warning about political interference. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine something similar happening here in the U.S.
Like many tech billionaires, Jeff Bezos has, in the last year, aligned himself more closely with Donald Trump. Bezos donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, which got him a seat at the president’s inauguration back in January. And then, about a month later, Bezos announced that the venerated newspaper he also owns, The Washington Post, would take a radical turn. The opinion section was directed to write every day in support and defense of personal liberties and free markets. Veteran Post columnist Ruth Marcus submitted a column that critiqued Bezos’s decision, which was then reportedly spiked, and shortly after, she resigned. Weeks later, another columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson, announced his own resignation.
Like Marcus, Robinson cited Bezos’ editorial directives as the reason for doing so. Still, the Post’s executive editor, Matt Murray, disputes that there’s editorial interference coming from the top. And last week, Bill Owens, the executive producer of CBS’s legendary 60 Minutes news program, resigned. Owens stated he felt pressure from his corporate bosses, specifically the network’s parent company Paramount, as they seek to stay in Trump’s good graces ahead of a lucrative merger. In a statement, the president and CEO of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, said she was committed to ensuring that the mission and the work remains their priority.
In Budapest, we wanted to speak with some of the journalists who have worked and continue to work under the Orbán regime.
I met up with Márton Kárpáti (ph), who used to work for the news site, Index, before its top editor was fired. It was another gorgeous day in autocratic Hungary, and we sat outside at a cafe. Kárpáti (ph) told me what Index had been like in its heyday.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): We used to work at Hungary’s biggest news site. We were the biggest ones. We were independent. We didn’t let anyone to influence our contents or how we operate, who to work with, who not to work with. But the people in power always try somehow get involved or take over the company or the side.
Alex Wagner: According to Kárpáti (ph), that is exactly what happened. Someone in power got involved, a pro-Orbán oligarch who was placed on the board of the publishing company.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): And we were like, okay. We don’t know how to handle this. But if they don’t cross the red lines, then we should do fine. But they did cross the red line.
Alex Wagner: That red line was Orbán’s ally telling Index how to operate as a news organization, what to put and what not to put in the editorial section.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): They came up with ideas how we should operate. I mean, we were market leaders and they brought some advisors who were telling us how to operate to be the best. And they said, come on, we are the best. It’s like a small Hungarian beverage company would go to Coca-Cola and say, I will tell you how to do a good soda. And at one point, they fired our editor in chief. And to our biggest surprise, everyone just stood up, quit in one day.
Alex Wagner: So that was that?
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. It was more than 90 people —
Alex Wagner: Wow.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): — without knowing —
Alex Wagner: Without coordinating.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): So it’s like jumping off a cliff. We have to make plan B.
Alex Wagner: Yep.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): We have to start our own news site, but we didn’t have anything. We didn’t have money. We didn’t have an office. We have nothing. We just knew that this is our mission. This is our job. This is what we are good at, and we want to do this. And we want to be independent. That was —
Alex Wagner: Number one.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes, number one. Yes.
Alex Wagner: Kárpáti’s team asked their loyal readers if they would donate and fund a new independent operation, one that would eventually house the former Index journalists.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): We gather, like, €1 million in a few weeks’ time —
Alex Wagner: Wow.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): — so we could make a comfortable start. And it was a strong support to know that, okay, we have this many supporters, and it’s not just about the money. We just knew that, okay, people believe in us. People need this. People want our job to continue.
Alex Wagner: This new outlet is called Telex, and it’s one of several smaller independent media outlets that have flourished despite Orbán’s takeover of the broader media landscape. But it’s not easy. A massive media foundation funded primarily by Orbán’s government has further consolidated Hungarian news by giving money to outlets that tow Orbán’s line. Essentially, it’s state propaganda.
Can you tell me a little bit about what Orbán did to consolidate all of the media? I mean, there was a point at which a lot of these media properties were put into a foundation. Is that right?
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. They had this strange moment when, like, I don’t know, 500 editorials just offered their companies to this big foundation.
Alex Wagner: 500?
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. Yes.
Alex Wagner: Offered themselves.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. To a foundation which was funded —
Alex Wagner: A foundation.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): — by some pro government people.
Alex Wagner: Some ally.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes, ally. Yes. Yes. And they just offer that, okay, here you go. You can do whatever you want.
Alex Wagner: What did you think when that happened?
Márton Kárpáti (ph): We weren’t surprised. We were like, okay, this is crazy. And how could that happen? But we knew that this fits into Orbán’s media policy.
Alex Wagner: That is just so brazen.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. Yes.
Alex Wagner: And so this foundation then becomes a clearing house for all the propaganda. Is that right?
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes.
Alex Wagner: Like, this is the entity from which a lot of this information.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes.
Alex Wagner: But it’s well resourced. Right? I mean, they have money.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): To understand the situation in Hungary, you have to know that the biggest spender is the state. It spends most of the money on advertisement. Not big companies, not international companies, not global companies, the state. The second biggest spender are state owned companies.
Alex Wagner: State owned companies.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): State owned. And the third biggest are companies who have strategic partnership with the government and who are afraid of, okay, what if I advertise in the independent press and the government thinks this was not a good idea, then I might lose my business in this state.
Alex Wagner: Wow. I just am thinking of the echoes of that in the United States. We have Jeff Bezos —
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. Yes.
Alex Wagner: — who does wants to do business with the federal government, who owns Amazon, a huge business that Trump —
Márton Kárpáti (ph): And Washington Post. Look at that what is happening there.
Alex Wagner: And also, who owns The Washington Post.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes.
Alex Wagner: We have Elon Musk.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes.
Alex Wagner: Who does tons of business with the federal government, also owns X.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes.
Alex Wagner: The social media platform. I mean, it’s not as explicit, but it’s certainly on its way.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. A few steps.
Alex Wagner: Those advertisers, which are all state affiliated for all intents and purposes, —
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes.
Alex Wagner: — they’re funneling the money into these propaganda machines.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. Yes.
Alex Wagner: And so what happens the information that’s pumped out from this these groups, I mean, I would assume they’re people that just read it and accept it. But because they’re so well resourced, I would imagine that some of that information trickles into, like it has a broad region. You tell me.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Let’s say, yes, we have 19 counties in the country. And people living outside of Budapest have this old habit that they —
Alex Wagner: Read the newspapers.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): — subscribe to the local newspaper. They get it. Most of the counties, they only have the option for the pro-government. There’s no other one.
Alex Wagner: Their only news option.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. That’s the only news option. Like, the public service media, they go home, they switch on the TV. The free channels are mostly pro government channels.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): I mean, they don’t broadcast news all day, but they just hear it. When they go to the pub because there’s nothing else open, then the state TV —
Alex Wagner: That’s what they get.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): — or the state radio is turned on. So, this is what they hear.
Alex Wagner: All Orbán affiliated.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. All.
Alex Wagner: Why do you do what you do if you think that the state just is dominant? It will crush any independent outlet in terms of scope, in terms of funding, in terms of reach. Why do what you do?
Márton Kárpáti (ph): This is what we believe in. This is what we are good at. This is what we think our readers need. Until we can, we will do our jobs and we won’t give up. If they want to put pressure on us, more pressure, then we will just fight.
Alex Wagner: Because that’s what you do.
Márton Kárpáti (ph): Yes. That’s what we do. We just want to do our jobs. It is written in the Constitution as well that state provides the free media. Okay, then, here we are, the free media.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Péter Nádori: Come in. We’re in the Second Floor.
Alex Wagner: Okay. Earlier, we got a chance to visit one of these independent outlets. Journalist Péter Nádori took us up the staircase to the headquarters of Direkt36, a nonprofit investigative journalism center.
Péter Nádori: This is just some kind of mezzanine.
Alex Wagner: Oh.
Péter Nádori: It’s just two more.
Alex Wagner: I love the old staircases in every building we go to. Nádori had been the editor in chief of Origo, another popular online news site. But after Origo fell under Orbán’s control, Nádori too decided to resign. Direkt36 headquarters are in a lovely old building, but it’s not a bustling newsroom. It is a small residential apartment. The space is decorated with a few plants and even more awards. And as we spoke, Nádori’s colleague, Kamilla Marton (ph), was answering calls at a nearby computer. (FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Péter Nádori: I’m sorry. She’s working on a story.
Alex Wagner: Well.
Péter Nádori: You know how journalists are.
Alex Wagner: Yes, I do. Marton (ph) graduated from university in 2022, and she recently worked on a documentary called The Dynasty. It examines the ways in which Orbán has funneled state money to his family members. Orbán never addressed those allegations directly, but state funded media tried to discredit Direkt36.
Kamilla Marton (ph): They never said anything about the facts that we stated. They said a complete lie that we got the money from the Ukrainian government, which we never did.
Alex Wagner: It’s gotten 3.6 million views on YouTube, but Marton isn’t sure how far the work penetrates, especially for those who’ve mostly known life only under Viktor Orbán.
Kamilla Marton (ph): I feel this with the younger generations, with the ones who I went to university with, that many of them don’t know what real journalism is because we were born in an era and in a country where, like, state media never was for the people and completely independent.
Alex Wagner: What does it mean to have a big investigative story published or come out or a documentary via Direkt36?
Kamilla Marton (ph): Well, I’m a little bit of a pessimist here because in Hungary, it is very hard to get any impact for your stories because the government just says that it’s fake news and, you know, they don’t say why. They just say that it’s not real.
Alex Wagner: Yes. We’re familiar with that in the United States as well.
Kamilla Marton (ph): Yes. So, it is very hard to reach any kind of impact with the stories. But Direkt36 managed to do so, I think, in a couple of cases. Like, for example, I think the Pegasus surveillance articles were huge in Hungary, and it reached a lot of people. But the end of that story, our journalist, my colleague, who has been surveilled, he was the one who get sued at the end of this by some people who were mentioned in the article because of defamation.
Alex Wagner: I asked Marton and Nádori if they had any advice for journalists today here in America.
Péter Nádori: Well, I think one of the lessons is obviously that you can thrive as a journalist even in such an environment. Maybe you can or must change some things in your methodology, or the business model, or whatever, but we’re still here. Our documentary is viewed by millions of Hungarians, so it’s not that easy to stamp out free press. On the other hand, one of the lessons of what happened in Hungary is that some institutions you are taking for granted can be pretty vulnerable. I’m sorry, but I won’t be that surprised if Jeff Bezos decides to just close down the Washington Post in a few weeks’ time or a few months’ time or a few years’ time, whatever, because he decides that it’s just too much of a hassle. So, my advice, look at your owners. Try to get a feel about their values because maybe their values are not aligned with the journalists’ values.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Alex Wagner: We’re going to take a short break. When we come back, we’ll take a look at the state of the opposition in Hungary and what, if anything, Americans might want to remember.
Chapter four, the opposition.
Márta Pardavi: One thing that these autocratic structures seem to really favor and also fuel is polarization. And when you have a polarized society, it’s going to be much harder to talk to your neighbor about certain issues. Right? There was one election. I had a dog. I went out to walk my dog with a regular group of people who we only knew each other through our dogs, and then all of a sudden it became two groups of people walking their dogs at different times.
Alex Wagner: Wow.
Márta Pardavi: So political polarization really splits society apart. And it’s such a cliche, right, that a healthy democracy needs a vibrant civil society in all its forms. So when you can’t join a dog walking group —
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márta Pardavi: — because of politics, that is a terribly polarized society. And this will be exploited by perhaps both parties or all parties in a lot of ways. So the challenge is how to resist polarization itself.
Alex Wagner: Yes. That is Márta Pardavi. She is a lawyer and the co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a leading human rights organization in Budapest.
As someone who has a vested interest in civil liberties, what does it make you think that one of the world’s biggest democracies, legendary democracies, is trying to mimic what is happening here in Hungary on the civil liberties front?
Márta Pardavi: First of all, I see Americans themselves who believe in not only civil liberties, but in democracy and liberal democracy with, you know, checks and balances and separation of powers being in a state of shock. And I think we share that shock.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márta Pardavi: So the day-to-day events unfolding, of course, have an immediate impact on us too. So it’s not only, you know, reading the news, but feeling it on your own skin on having a space that you thought worked.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márta Pardavi: Fall apart. The other thing is that I’m quite hopeful at the same time for the now, apparently quite creaky system of checks and balances in the U.S. to be more resilient than what we have in Hungary. So it’s a real test. Right? It’s the biggest stress test, basically, to democracy, perhaps, that we’ve seen.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márta Pardavi: So how resilient are people? And what we’ve seen in Hungary is that there is resilience, and how you can mobilize people is a big challenge, but there is resilience.
Alex Wagner: In Hungary, that resilience takes many forms. You see it in the NGOs taking on corruption at the highest levels of government and in opposition leaders who are willing to risk their careers to openly protest the Orbán regime.
What do you call it?
Márton Tompos: Smoke candle.
Alex Wagner: A smoke candle. And you have those at every protest?
Márton Tompos: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Márton Tompos helped lead the anti-Orbán protest that we attended in Budapest. He’s also the cofounder and leader of the liberal Momentum Party and has been serving since 2022. I sat down with him in the middle of Kossuth Square, right in front of the Parliament building. We talked about what it means to be in the opposition under an authoritarian government.
Can you talk to me about what happened in the 2022 election for people who aren’t familiar with kind of the line in the sand that that represented?
Márton Tompos: How long is this going to be? I mean, how much time do I have?
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: Briefly.
Alex Wagner: An overview and briefly.
Márton Tompos: Sure. So, this system is running since 2010.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: It feels like an eternity.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: And there was massive public pressure and pressure flow on political influencers, journalists, activists that the opposition should at least coordinate if not unite. So all the opposition parties had primaries. So in each of the 106 constituencies, we have one common candidate, and it finally looked like that it’s coming together.
Alex Wagner: You united around, coalesced.
Márton Tompos: Yes. It was a strong coordination.
Alex Wagner: For the most part.
Márton Tompos: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: And eventually, we lost badly. I mean, horribly. So this is the, I don’t know, fourth super majority that the government has, I believe. And, they can do anything they want really now at this point.
Alex Wagner: And what did that feel like? I mean, I’m thinking of 2022 in part because I think there are echoes of that for Democrats in the 2024 election. And, you know, you’ll hear people argue, okay, but it was a close, much closer than Donald Trump has said it was. But he won every single —
Márton Tompos: Yes.
Alex Wagner: — swing state, and he has Congress, and he effectively has a judiciary. How did you sort of sort through the ashes of the defeat, and what was the sort of thinking in terms of how to oppose or what to even oppose in the immediate aftermath of that?
Márton Tompos: I think the biggest lesson from this 2022 defeat was that you might coordinate, you might work together, but giving up your identity and just giving up what you believe in doesn’t work.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: So try to be more populist than a populist master, whether it’s Trump or Orbán or Putin or Erdogan or whomever. It’s just you’re never going to win that game. So stick to what you have. And the other thing what we need to understand, is that there is a so-called re-personalization of politics. So let me give you a sports example.
Right now, fewer and fewer people follow the Lakers, let’s say, but rather they follow Jokic or Lebron. They don’t follow the brand, the idea, the history behind the team. They follow people. And there’s the same thing for politics.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: And this is why we have now a guy, Mr. Magyar who is the face. He’s a leading opposition figure.
Alex Wagner: Péter Magyar.
Márton Tompos: Yes. And when we had won in 2022, he was a bit of a loose cannon, bit weird guy, and it doesn’t work like that in a situation when social media influencer, everyone is pressuring towards one leading figure. And I think that’s what the Democrats and everyone who’s opposing the Trump administration has to figure out. Do you want to find a leader?
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: Or you want to go philosophically in the opposite direction and say that we are a team and we are not going to just stand behind a strongman?
Alex Wagner: It sounds like you’re advising, find the leader. Don’t be philosophically.
Márton Tompos: No. You’re asking —
Alex Wagner: Which comes first? You do at the same time.
Márton Tompos: You have to choose between one of the two extremes. You really stand behind one leader and stop fighting and just go with him or her, or you go with a group and you go fully against the current wave of politics and say the other thing.
Alex Wagner: Be firmly in opposition to everything that Orbán stands for.
Márton Tompos: Kind of. Yes.
Alex Wagner: I guess there is some thinking in the United States, for example, that Trump has co-opted parts of the democratic message around the social safety net or just economic populism. That in fact, the true economic populists are the democrats. And to not at least try and have that argument with him is giving up a huge part of what the party stands for.
Márton Tompos: Sure. But the Democrats doesn’t have any — they don’t have any message. And I think you have to just look at the history. I mean, what happened after the seventies, this hyper globalization, and all the workers lost their jobs, and now the China just who didn’t follow suit. It’s a long story, but the main point is how the blue collar workers just stood back and went for the Republicans, which is absurd if you look at both Hungarian history, European history, and, U.S. history.
Alex Wagner: Yes.
Márton Tompos: It’s just the democrats couldn’t find a way back to that fear. This is why they go to identity politics and work around issues like transgender questions and LGBTQ rights and Black Lives Matter. And I’m not saying that these are not important.
Alex Wagner: Yes. Right.
Márton Tompos: I’m saying that they lost the focus because you can’t make the majority feel bad about themselves and how they behave and in the same time ask for their vote.
Alex Wagner: Explain that to me a little bit more because you and I met at a protest against the constitutional amendment banning pride.
Márton Tompos: Sure. But is this just a symptom? I mean, this system what we have here, some call it a hybrid regime, some call it a lateral autocracy, some call it a spin dictatorship. My point is that it’s sliding down towards the Belarus or Putin way. And it means that banning the pride is just a symptom. The road it takes is leading us to not really having a proper action. Yes. We can go to the urns (ph) and cast our votes, but it doesn’t really matter and nobody will have a chance. So, this is just a step, and we want to just stop it right here before it go — it gets really massive.
Alex Wagner: Tompos mentioned Péter Magyar, a former Orbán ally and rising star in conservative circles. Magyar is now running against Orbán with an anti-corruption message. He’s promising to fix the economy and bring Hungary back into alignment with the European Union. In a short time, Magyar has united a wide range of opposition parties, and his message appears to be resonating with voters even in remote parts of the country. For the first time in a long time, Hungary maybe feels like it’ll have a viable two-person race in the 2026 elections, which are set for April of next year.
Do you think the 2026 elections are going to be different? Could they be a different outcome than Orbán winning?
Márton Tompos: They will be different, but not because of the result. I don’t want to guess what’s going to happen. I’m sure that it’s going to be different because of the candidates, and it’s going to be different because if Fidesz is losing like half year before, they’re going to change it completely so nobody will even have a slightest chance to win.
Alex Wagner: You think that they’re going to actually interfere in the election?
Márton Tompos: Yes. And not only them, the Russians, the Chinese. I mean, Hungary is such a strong Trojan horse in the bloc that it’s just too good an investment to let go.
Alex Wagner: How do you then, I mean, if you believe that, you know, if Orbán stands a chance of losing, they will literally rig the election.
Márton Tompos: Yes.
Alex Wagner: What’s the point?
Márton Tompos: I have a seven-week son. Seven-week-old. And if I’m not going to do something, what can I tell him when he grows up and asked that, yes, dad, why when we left Hungary, I’m like, why? Did you do something? Now I can say, yes. I’ve been an MP. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and then we left when the last moment when it seemed like there is no change. We don’t really have a choice. If we want a proper Hungary, which a European minded, like, pro-democratic country, then we have to stay and fight.
Alex Wagner: And you believe that that kind of Hungary is possible?
Márton Tompos: I hope so. When I started, I thought that this can happen by the time I’m going to be a grandparent. But now I realize that yes, that may be true, but the process has to start at some point and I’m working on that.
Alex Wagner: And your son is seven weeks old?
Márton Tompos: Yes.
Alex Wagner: Let’s hope he has babies young. We went to Hungary hoping to get a sense of what Orbán’s autocratic maneuvering might tell us about our precarious democracy here at home. And what we found there was, to some degree, terrifying and depressing. But on another level, it was also really quite inspiring. The trampling of civil rights, repression of basic freedoms, targeting of marginalized communities, destruction of a free press, and just rampant corruption. All these things are very real for Hungarians. These things do not easily resolve themselves.
And all these things seem like very real scenarios that might unfold one day if they haven’t begun unfolding already here in America. But what I found so hopeful in this very quick trip to Hungary is that even in a country where there is no real contemporary culture of protest and civil unrest and where the institutions of the fourth estate and the judiciary and civil society are much less strong than what we have in the United States. People are out on the streets. They’re researching and reporting on wrongdoing. They are writing. They are making new things where the old ones have crumbled or have been taken down. And they do so not because they expect immediate results or even results anytime soon. They’re doing it for their children and their grandchildren, for some version of democracy that they themselves may not even live to experience.
And so if the Hungarians can do this, even when it’s beautiful outside and the cafes are full and who really wants to put up a fight, or even when the state has crushed nearly every institution meant to protect its citizens and how much optimism can anyone really be expected to muster in the face of that? If they can do all that, well, then maybe we have a shot too. Actually, more than a shot. It’s just up to us.
As we close out these 100 of Trumpland, I’m going to keep thinking about what Márta Pardavi told me in her office about division. She said autocratic structures favor and fuel polarization. So when we stop walking our dogs together, we give the autocrats an opportunity, really. When we start separating ourselves, that is when the system opens itself up for extremism and autocracy and even fascism.
And if you wondered why we started this series talking to newly released January 6 inmates, or if you scratched your head when you heard our conversation with Trump supporting farmers in the middle of a tariff war. Marxist wisdom goes a long way in explaining why. We do not have to agree with each other, but as members of what is really still a fledgling democracy, just 200 odd years old, if we’re going to make it, we can’t shut ourselves off from each other. So, keep walking your dogs together. Keep talking. Keep arguing. Keep listening. And truly, thank you for listening to all of this.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
And that’s a wrap for this final official episode of Trumpland with Alex Wagner. Guys, it has been a monster project to put together every week, but your listenership and support has really, really, really made it all worthwhile. So, thank you for tuning in.
Now for MSNBC premium subscribers, there will be one more bonus episode coming soon. A little behind the scenes wrap up about the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. If you sign up or you’re already a subscriber, that perk will also allow you to get all of your MSNBC podcasts ad free.
The close of this podcast also coincides with the end of my time with some of the staff of my now former TV show, Alex Wagner Tonight. I am so, so grateful I got a chance to work with them on this very special and utterly insane project.
My patient, mostly good humored, number one ally in the world, Matthew Alexander, who I have worked with on and off for nearly 14 years and is never ever getting rid of me no matter what. The great Kay Guerrero, who is a producer of the highest order and who is the only person with whom I ever want to be stranded on a desert island or actually anywhere. The utterly fantastic Julia DeAngelo, who is blindingly bright and just an absolute dream to work with.
This podcast will also be the last show for one of our longtime stellar associate producers, Janmaris Perez who will be greatly missed for all of her hard work and dedication and for all of the joy she brought to our little team.
And now, for a final time, Trumpland with Alex Wagner is produced by Max Jacobs along with Julia DeAngelo and Kay Guerrero. Our associate producer is Janmaris Perez. Our crew included Bill Hennessey on audio and Liam Lee and Greg Purpura on camera. Our audio engineers are Bob Mallory and Katie Lau, and Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Matthew Alexander is our executive producer, and Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC audio. And I’m your host, Alex Wagner. Thanks for listening.