Warning to America: Hungarian Green on Authoritarianism as Trump Hosts PM Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago

It’s official: Following Tuesday’s primaries, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump appear set for a rematch in November after both candidates secured enough delegates to win their parties’ nominations. This past weekend, Republican front-runner Donald Trump hosted Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago and openly praised Orbán’s autocratic style of rule. To talk more about Orbán and Trump, we spoke Tuesday with Gábor Scheiring, a former Green Party member of parliament in Hungary, who has a new essay titled “I watched Hungary’s democracy dissolve into authoritarianism as a member of parliament — and I see troubling parallels in Trumpism and its appeal to workers.” He explains that “strongmen” like Orbán and Trump are subverting democracy “from the inside, gradually,” using tactics like gerrymandering and control of the courts to seize and consolidate power.