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Reflections on the End of Democracy: The Orbán-Trump Connection
As academics based in Hungary who have closely followed the trajectory of Orbánism, we urge American citizens to reflect deeply on the nature of the political crossroads facing them.
Feb 07, 2026
For some time, there has been something of a political ‘bromance’ between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and US President Donald Trump. Orbán has been a frequent visitor to the US to meet Trump even meeting him during the election campaign in the run up to Trump’s second term. During a visit in late 2025 Trump lauded Orbán “You are fantastic. I know a lot of people don’t agree with me, but I’m the only one that matters.” In response Orbán (2025) spoke of a "golden age between the United States and Hungary." Such is the high regard Orbán is held in by Trump that Budapest was touted as a possible venue for a peace summit for the Ukraine war between Putin and Zelenskyy.
Vice President Vance has long praised Orbán for promoting conservative family policies and the exertion of greater control over higher education which critics claim is undermining academic freedom. Vance, like Orbán, has also been critical of Ukraine. Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and other elements of the MAGA media network often heap praise on Orbán as a visionary and outrider that America could follow.
This article seeks to inform readers about what Orbán represents and highlights the similarities between him and Trump and where this might take America. We speak from a position of experience being academics and civic voices based in Hungary who have closely followed the trajectory of Orbánism.
Cultural – Economic Drivers
Deindustrialization and decline in rustbelt areas in both countries exacerbated by the global financial crisis of 2008, creating unprecedented unemployment and anxiety, formed a significant group of ‘have-nots’ (people at the margins) in both countries, susceptible to nativist and exceptionalist rhetoric. More broadly cultural insecurities prompted by an ever-changing highly globalized world have been disorientating for some, especially older voters or those in the countryside. These are the demographic groups that have played an active role in forming the electoral base for authoritarian populism in both countries.
Although Orbán is something of a poster boy for the MAGA network, in Europe his reputation is more controversial. Hungary has experienced frequent criticism and sanction from the European Union for rule of law violations most notably relating to media, civil and academic freedoms and independence of the judiciary during the premiership of Orbán.
One point of difference is Hungary has a limited tradition of liberal democracy which existed for a brief twenty-year period from the end of communism in 1990 up to Orbán’s second premiership that started in 2010. With the interwar autocratic leader Admiral Horthy and the postwar Communist leader János Kádár authoritarianism could be seen as the norm for Hungary unlike the USA that until recently was seen as a model of liberal democracy and rule of law conventions. However, things are changing rapidly with a second Trump term terms being marked by an assertive and rapid upending of the political system.
That Authoritarian Style
Both Orbán and Trump are classified as being authoritarian populists. Both are framed as strongman, battling modern day folk devils, namely immigrants, liberals and other minorities cast as an ‘enemy within’ in an emergency politics where the strongman through a performative hypermasculinity takes assertive and often polarizing action, championing a perceived majority of the ‘good’ and ‘pure’ people.
At the centre of the political narrative of these two leaders is a sense of exceptionalism. The Make America Great Again slogan reveals a sense that the US is losing its place in the world and is in need of reorientation. Of course, Hungary was never a superpower, but it sees itself as a bridge to the East and West and an out-rider, or champion, to the challenge of liberalism. Both have a nostalgic and rigid conception of national identity which for them makes migration and diversity an anathema to their monocultural and conservative conception of national identity.
Decision Making and Public Sphere
Both Orbán and Trump can be viewed as counter-enlightenment figures in the sense that their analysis is not driven by scientific and rationalist decision-making principles where decisions might be based on a proper evaluation of evidence and notion of public good. Both display an element of what has come to be called ‘Post Truth Politics’, where emotions and conspiracy theory shape political narrative. Orbán and Vance have for example actively espoused the ‘replacement theory’ that contends there is a shadowy plan to flood Europe with migrants to replace domestic European workers and reverse demographic decline but also weaken sovereignty through diluting national identities enabling the creation of a European super-state.
Disregard for fact has led to both Orbán and Trump nurturing a partisan public sphere, in Hungary this is more advanced with newspapers and television stations largely in the control of figures loyal to Orbán, it has been estimated that 80 percent of the Hungarian media is aligned to Orbán, often providing a platform to campaigns steered by polarizing rhetoric which at its core is guided by a ‘politics of fear’ hence immigrants, especially if Muslim, LGBTQI, George Soros and the European Union have been framed as an existential threat, with the media failing to challenge these assertions or giving space to counterviews and generally replicating such views in reporting.
Orbán and Trump also view academia as a bootcamp for liberalism and as bastions of the tyranny of political correctness, thus in Hungary Orbán government has placed most of the public universities in the control of appointed cronies through what has been described as model change. In addition, the government has refused to validate courses like Gender Studies, seeing it as a threat to conservative conceptions of the family. The George Soros supported Central European University was pushed out of Hungary because Orbán, feared the political and intellectual influence of a university with a commitment to open society in its mission. Trump’s attacks on universities with accusations of left-wing bias and the withholding of Federal funding can be seen as a similar effort to exert great control over academia.
Policy Positions
In terms of a number of key policy areas there are some striking similarities between Orbán and Trump. Orbán has accused the EU of undermining national sovereignty and the recent and controversial US security strategy indicated that America in its international relations would prioritize alliances with countries like Hungary that place a strong premium on sovereignty. It is a view of state power and sovereignty that relies on a strong executive unencumbered by checks and balances, hence both Orbán and Trump have been accused of rule of law violations that weaken the guardrails and safeguards of democracy, creating a ‘Deep State’ in the sense that public officials are expected to be obedient and align closely to the political narrative and interests of these two leaders. This has created profound constitutional shocks in both countries.
The nativism of Orbán and Trump has led to the securitization of migration, both have constructed ramped up border protection, basically walls, with increased border enforcement often framed as a masculinized and militarized show of strength and determination to keep migrants out and most recently demonstrated in the performance of ICE roundups in some parts of America.
As noted earlier both leaders court moral conservativism and have formed a strategic alliance with traditional and conservative Christian leaders, with both seeking to limit reproductive rights. In 2025 Orbán banned the annual LGBTQ Pride march in Budapest and threatening to fine those who attended with fines based on biometric surveillance, an act that was heavily denounced by the European Union and civil rights defenders like Amnesty International.
In terms of economics both Orbán and Trump have been prepared to use state power to intervene in markets. Orbán has been willing to use state power to freeze utility bills and Trump has interfered with market freedom through protectionism and tariffs. Both, despite their rhetoric and appeals to the ‘have-nots’ seem to support tax, welfare and regulatory frameworks, that favour the interests of oligarchs over workers in a ‘race to the bottom’ of social protection. The alliance with oligarchs in both countries reflects a relational conception of economic strategy where political power is used to further the interests of sections of the economic elite willing to express loyalty and put patronal networks at the service of political leaders.
Putin, Europe, and the World
Trump with his desire to annex Greenland and sympathy for Putin’s expansionism in Ukraine and disparagement of the value of NATO to US interests is perceived as turning his back on the postwar international order of global rules to deter the aggressive expansionism that triggered World War Two. Critics of this postwar order might question whether America really was the ‘Shinning Beacon’ it was held to be, but some would argue this framework strove to give the world a sense of order and stability and stemmed the advance of Soviet totalitarianism.
Orbán has drawn strong criticism for continuing to court Putin and his use of veto power to thwart within the EU support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The sympathy and alliance with Russia are a surprising and contradictory phenomena given Hungary’s historic antipathy to Russian expansionism as reflected by the 1956 uprising where Hungarians sought to eject Soviet occupiers. Such sympathies toward Putin by Trump are surprising too given that in America a deep political consensus once existed in postwar US politics that Russian expansionism, especially in the Cold war, was a major threat to global security. In this new global order both Orbán and Trump seem to support a world dominated by regional hegemons, with the US and Russia appearing to have the right to impose regional hegemonies capable of interfering in the affairs of its neighbors, a Monroe doctrine for the 21st century.
In terms of the Putinization of America and Hungary one of the most significant features may be the spread of cronyism and corruption. As noted, both Orbán and Trump have created a network of cronyism giving patronage and protection to influential supporters. Orbán’s family and network of friends have grown fabulously rich and some would argue Trump has not been averse to using presidential power to advance his business interests and the Trump brand.
Framing the Democratic Decline
There are different possible framings of democratic backsliding, which started in smaller countries, such as Hungary, but after reaching the US as the main geopolitical power, and once the model for democracy, it became a worldwide threat. The first possibility is to call Trump and Orbán populists. Indeed, in their rhetoric they often refer to the ‘people’ in a moral battle against the ‘elites’ to which they both belong to. But as opposed to some pluralist populists their main characteristics are that they are illiberal autocrats willing to use unlimited executive power disregarding any checks and balances and fundamental rights. Moreover, Orbán’s ‘mafia state’ and Trump’s own family and business interests, which some would argue are the main determinators of his decisions as President. And this is not just tyranny, but also oligarchy, the other deviant form of government according to Aristotle.
One may ask, why is it important to emphasize that Trump’s and Orbán’s systems are not only populist and authoritarian but also oligarchic. Because restoring democracy requires different resilience capacities in the three cases. Populism is the easiest to remedy. Sometimes it only requires taking back democratic politics to the needs of ordinary citizens, for example ‘farmers’ and ‘workers’ as the Populist Party sought to in the US in the late 19th century. For reversing democratic backsliding, strong institutional resilience and resistance are necessary, which also presupposes the longstanding structural elements, such as constitutional culture, civil society. The almost 250 years long endurance of the US constitution will most probably enough to preserve constitutional democracy, but the twenty years of liberal constitutionalism in Hungary after 1989 isn’t a guarantee for the same. But the hardest task ahead for both countries will be to get rid of oligarchy, as long as Wall Street supports Trump rather than a democratic populist.
Hungary at a Crossroads
The outcome of the April election in Hungary will determine if Hungary is willing to turn a page, the moderate Conservative leader Péter Magyar seems to be riding high in the polls. If Orbán losses in Hungary it will be an important setback for authoritarian populism that could have impact on the US mid-terms. The turning point in Hungary was that the public stopped believing the Orbán narrative, scandals and corruption eroded public trust. The pardoning of an orphanage manager who had attempted to cover up pedophilia by close supporters of Orbán gave a deeply dark insight into the nature of Hungarian politics which a large section of the public found deeply disturbing. It remains to be seen whether personal and public scandals hovering around Trump provide an equally revelatory moment.
In the USA, worries about an executive overreaching its authority, perhaps most evident in the manner of ICE roundups in some major cities are prompting American citizens to deeply reflect on the nature of the political crossroads facing them. Perhaps in both countries there is a realization that the politics of demagoguery is a distraction from the genuine crises facing the world today, namely ruthless and corrupt leaders who do not respect the rule of law, a failing and unfair economy and global warming and environmental change. There is indeed an emergency, a global one or ‘polycrisis’ and a need for exigency, the problem is we are following the wrong plan in Hungary and America.
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Will the Right’s Anti-Immigrant, Divide-and-Conquer Tactics Work in 2024?
The economically and socially privileged and their political parties have long recognized that, to defeat the drive for the expansion of economic and social equality, it would be useful to fan the flames of popular prejudices.
Sep 26, 2024
In recent days, former U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican running mate, JD Vance, have doubled down on their false and defamatory claims about legally admitted Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, thus churning up widespread fears, bomb threats, and school evacuations. Claiming that these migrants were destroying the American “way of life,” Trump promised that, if elected, he would order massive deportations. This statement echoed his astonishing promise, made during the 2024 campaign and previously, to seize and deport between 15 and 20 million immigrants.
Nativist agitation has a long, sordid history in the United States. In the 1850s, large numbers of American Protestants rallied behind the Know Nothing movement and its political offshoot, the American Party, ventures centered primarily on opposing the influence of immigrant Catholics. In the latter part of the 19th century, hostility toward Chinese immigrants (“the yellow peril”) and, later, Japanese immigrants led to lynchings, riots, and legislation that barred virtually all immigration from the two Asian nations.
During the early 20th century, American xenophobia focused on the alleged dangers provided by the “new immigrants” from Southern and Eastern Europe, predominantly Catholics and Jews. Such people, it was claimed, had a higher propensity for moral depravity, feeble-mindedness, and crime, and were polluting the “Nordic race.” As a result, many “old stock” Americans championed changes in immigration law to sharply reduce the number of these allegedly inferior people entering the country. Adopted in legislation during the 1920s, a new, highly discriminatory national origins quota system did, indeed, largely restrict their ability to enter the United States, leaving millions to perish in Europe after the onset of the Nazi terror.
Although nativism has been mobilized by political parties and movements of varying political persuasions, it has appeared most frequently on the right.
Of course, many Americans, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, welcomed the arrival of people from foreign lands. And, in line with their views, U.S. immigration law was significantly liberalized in 1965.
We should also recognize that the United States was hardly unique in undergoing surges of anti-immigrant nativism. Indeed, over the centuries, recent arrivals in many countries experienced rampant xenophobia—including “Paki-bashing” in Britain and violence against Turkish immigrants in Germany. Recently, in fact, intense opposition to immigration and immigrants provided a key factor behind British public support for Brexit and the startling rise of previously marginal, hyper-nationalist parties in Europe.
What has inspired this hostility to people coming from other lands?
Many individuals, it seems, feel uneasy when confronted with the unfamiliar. Thus, they sometimes find differences in skin color, religion, language, or culture to be disturbing. Although some people can―and often do―find these things a welcome addition to their lives or, at least, interesting, others become uncomfortable. In these circumstances, immigrants are easily added to other disdained minority groups as victims of widespread misinformation, mistrust, and prejudice.
Unfortunately, this unease with human differences provides a ready-made opportunity for political exploitation. As many a demagogue or unscrupulous politician has learned, fear and hatred of the “other” can be effective in stirring up a mob or winning an election.
Although nativism has been mobilized by political parties and movements of varying political persuasions, it has appeared most frequently on the right. Fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930s focused heavily on the supposed glories of their nation and the ostensible biological inferiority of people from other lands. This xenophobia provided a rightwing ideological component in numerous countries, including the United States, where groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Silver Shirts, the Nazi Party, and the America First movement lauded a mythical “Americanism” and assailed the foreign-born.
More recently, too, anti-immigrant sentiment has played a central role in Europe’s parties of the far right, such as France’s National Front (now the National Rally), Alternative for Germany, the Swiss People’s Party, Hungary’s Fidesz, the Party of Freedom of the Netherlands, the Brothers of Italy, and numerous others of their stripe. Meanwhile, in the United States, anti-immigrant sentiment has thrived in the increasingly right-wing Republican Party. Trump’s adoption of an anti-immigrant approach as a central theme of his MAGA movement, like his promise of building a wall between Mexico and the United States, is no accident, but part of a political strategy to ride xenophobia to power.
A key reason that nativism has become a staple of the right is that, with the advent of democratic institutions in many nations, the right has faced a difficult situation. Before the commoners gained the vote, their opportunities for effectively challenging economic and social inequality were limited. But, armed with the ballot, masses of people had the power to elect governments that would implement more equitable policies, such as sharing the wealth. This could be accomplished in a variety of ways, including taking control of giant corporations and estates, heavily taxing vast fortunes, raising workers’ pay, reducing the workday and lengthening vacations, building inexpensive housing, and establishing free education and healthcare. Worst of all, from the standpoint of the right, such leveling measures, advanced by a burgeoning left, had significant popular appeal.
Faced with this dilemma, the economically and socially privileged and their political parties on the right recognized that, to defeat the drive for the expansion of economic and social equality, it would be useful to fan the flames of popular prejudices (among them, hostility to immigrants), as this would divide the mass base of the left and put it on the defensive. Consequently, they gravitated toward this divide and conquer strategy―a strategy that sometimes worked.
Will it work again in the 2024 U.S. presidential and congressional elections? With the poll numbers so close, it’s hard to say.
Meanwhile, though, it’s worth noting how ironic it is that, in the United States―a nation populated almost entirely by immigrants and their descendants―anti-immigrant sentiment, whipped up by Trump and Vance, has once again come to the forefront of American politics.
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The Dehumanizing Cruelty at the Texas Border Is Part of a Larger GOP Pattern
While investigations should proceed to ensure accountability for those responsible for the horrors near the Rio Grande, we also need to fight against the other fronts of the GOP’s all-out nativist assault on our values.
Jul 25, 2023
Horrific details emerged last week of Texas state troopers deployed by Gov. Greg Abbott denying water to pregnant women and pushing children back into the Rio Grande and the accompanying dangers of deployed razor wire. The barriers are designed to harm and ensnare people seeking asylum in the U.S. Rather than treating it as a vile story that soon fades from the news and our consciousness, we must view the revelations through their larger context.
Unfortunately, it’s just the latest—and a particularly troubling—example of a larger pattern of dehumanizing, dangerous, and politically motivated nativism advanced by Republicans and right wing media. It’s predicated on a false portrayal of immigrants and asylum seekers as threats, invaders, and replacers. And its relentless and accompanying messaging barrage is helping to mainstream dangerous white nationalist conspiracies that are directly linked to real acts of deadly violence.
All of this should be a wake-up call about the consequences of dehumanizing immigrants and should be a focus of real and bipartisan accountability, alongside policy efforts focused on solutions to a broken immigration system. Instead, we expect Republicans to continue in a dangerous, alternate direction.
The GOP prefers chaos and obstruction, designed to keep a sense of crisis involving non-white immigrants in the headlines and portraying “us” as under siege from threatening invaders.
While investigations should proceed to ensure accountability for those responsible for the horrors near the Rio Grande, we also need to fight against the other fronts of the GOP’s all-out nativist assault on our values and its dangerous implications for our country. This includes House Republicans’ effort to pursue a sham impeachment of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—an effort that will hurtle forward this week when Secretary Mayorkas testifies before the House Judiciary Committee in the latest installment of right-wing alternate reality TV.
Keep in mind, domestic extremists—predominantly right-wing extremists—pose the greatest lethal terrorism threat to the U.S. per our government’s own assessments. Yet Republicans are intent to impeach the leader tasked with protecting our homeland, while basing their supposed case on immigration falsehoods, using many of the same talking points as the domestic extremists themselves.
This is impeachment over policy differences, and the GOP’s refusal to admit that their apocalyptic predictions about the end of Title 42 got it exactly backwards. Border encounter numbers have plummeted since the overdue end of Title 42, including because of new legal pathways announced by the Biden administration that alleviate border pressures and provide alternatives to the trek to the border.
Yet instead of acknowledging these facts, Republicans are suing to block these legal pathways while proceeding with their pre-baked attacks on Secretary Mayorkas as if their predictions got it right. None of the Republican alternative approaches would advance real solutions or move us closer to the full-scale modernization our immigration system needs—or even greater management and control—but the GOP keeps blocking anything like solutions.
The GOP prefers chaos and obstruction, designed to keep a sense of crisis involving non-white immigrants in the headlines and portraying “us” as under siege from threatening invaders. It’s dangerous, and it’s motivated by keeping the GOP base animated and inflamed. In reality, their latest impeachment push continues a political attack that GOP and right-wing leaders started long before President Joe Biden was even in office, when they blamed candidate Biden’s immigration policies for a rise in border encounters occurring during the Trump presidency.
It's all independent from the facts, moves us farther from the solutions we need, and opens the door to dangerous violence and dehumanizing treatment of immigrants by amplifying dangerous white nationalist conspiracies about “invasions” and an effort to “replace” white Americans with immigrants. In the 118th Congress alone, tracking by America’s Voice has revealed that 33 Republican Members of Congress have employed the “invasion” conspiracy, including GOP members of the House Judiciary Committee that Secretary Mayorkas will testify before.
From the horrific revelations emanating from Texas to the renewed sham impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, we need to fight against the dehumanization of immigrants and the normalization of extremism in all its forms.
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Trump, His Virus, and the Dark Age of Unreason
He's the latest in a long line of American demagogues but has come closest to the White House. That makes him the most dangerous of them all.
Jun 16, 2016
There's a virus infecting our politics and right now it's flourishing with a scarlet heat. It feeds on fear, paranoia and bigotry. All that was required for it to spread was a timely opportunity -- and an opportunist with no scruples.
There have been stretches of history when this virus lay dormant. Sometimes, it would flare up here and there, then fade away after a brief but fierce burst of fever. At other moments, it has spread with the speed of a firestorm, a pandemic consuming everything in its path, sucking away the oxygen of democracy and freedom.
Today its carrier is Donald Trump, but others came before him: narcissistic demagogues who lie and distort in pursuit of power and self-promotion. Bullies all, swaggering across the landscape with fistfuls of false promises, smears, innuendo and hatred for others, spite and spittle for anyone of a different race, faith, gender or nationality.
In America, the virus has taken many forms: "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, the South Carolina governor and senator who led vigilante terror attacks with a gang called the Red Shirts and praised the efficiency of lynch mobs; radio's charismatic Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic, pro-Fascist Catholic priest who reached an audience of up to 30 million with his attacks on Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal; Mississippi's Theodore Bilbo, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who vilified ethnic minorities and deplored the "mongrelization" of the white race; Louisiana's corrupt and dictatorial Huey Long, who promised to make "Every Man a King." And of course, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and four-time presidential candidate who vowed, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
Note that many of these men leavened their gospel of hate and their lust for power with populism -- giving the people hospitals, schools and highways. Father Coughlin spoke up for organized labor. Both he and Huey Long campaigned for the redistribution of wealth. Tillman even sponsored the first national campaign-finance reform law, the Tillman Act, in 1907, banning corporate contributions to federal candidates.
But their populism was tinged with poison -- a pernicious nativism that called for building walls to keep out people and ideas they didn't like.
Which brings us back to Trump and the hotheaded, ego-swollen provocateur he most resembles: Joseph McCarthy, US senator from Wisconsin -- until now perhaps our most destructive demagogue. In the 1950s, this madman terrorized and divided the nation with false or grossly exaggerated tales of treason and subversion -- stirring the witches' brew of anti-Communist hysteria with lies and manufactured accusations that ruined innocent people and their families. "I have here in my hand a list," he would claim -- a list of supposed Reds in the State Department or the military. No one knew whose names were there, nor would he say, but it was enough to shatter lives and careers.
In the end, McCarthy was brought down. A brave journalist called him out on the same television airwaves that helped the senator become a powerful, national sensation. It was Edward R. Murrow, and at the end of an episode exposing McCarthy on his CBS series See It Now, Murrow said:
"It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."
There also was the brave and moral lawyer Joseph Welch, acting as chief counsel to the US Army after it was targeted for one of McCarthy's inquisitions. When McCarthy smeared one of his young associates, Welch responded in full view of the TV and newsreel cameras during hearings in the Senate. "You've done enough," Welch said. "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?... If there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further."
It was a devastating moment. Finally, McCarthy's fellow senators -- including a handful of brave Republicans -- turned on him, putting an end to the reign of terror. It was 1954. A motion to censure McCarthy passed 67-22, and the junior senator from Wisconsin was finished. He soon disappeared from the front pages and, three years later, was dead.
Here's something McCarthy said that could have come straight out of the Trump playbook: "McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled." Sounds just like The Donald, right? Interestingly, you can draw a direct line from McCarthy to Trump -- two degrees of separation. In a Venn diagram of this pair, the place where the two circles overlap, the person they share in common is a fellow named Roy Cohn.
Cohn was chief counsel to McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the same one Welch went up against. Cohn was McCarthy's henchman, a master of dark deeds and dirty tricks. When McCarthy fell, Cohn bounced back to his hometown of New York and became a prominent Manhattan wheeler-dealer, a fixer representing real estate moguls and mob bosses -- anyone with the bankroll to afford him. He worked for Trump's father, Fred, beating back federal prosecution of the property developer, and several years later would do the same for Donald. "If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent," Trump told a magazine reporter in 1979, "you get Roy." To another writer he said, "Roy was brutal but he was a very loyal guy."
Cohn introduced Trump to his McCarthy-like methods of strong-arm manipulation and to the political sleaze meister Roger Stone, another dirty trickster and unofficial adviser to Trump who just this week suggested that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin was a disloyal American who may be a spy for Saudi Arabia, a "terrorist agent."
Cohn also introduced Trump to the man who is now his campaign chair, Paul Manafort, the political consultant and lobbyist who without a moral qualm in the world has made a fortune representing dictators -- even when their interests flew in the face of human rights or official US policy.
So the ghost of Joseph McCarthy lives on in Donald Trump as he accuses President Obama of treason, slanders women, mocks people with disabilities and impugns every politician or journalist who dares call him out for the liar and bamboozler he is. The ghosts of all the past American demagogues live on in him as well, although none of them have ever been so dangerous -- none have come as close to the grand prize of the White House.
Because even a pathological liar occasionally speaks the truth, Trump has given voice to many who feel they've gotten a raw deal from establishment politics, who see both parties as corporate pawns, who believe they have been cheated by a system that produces enormous profits from the labor of working men and women that are gobbled up by the 1 percent at the top. But again, Trump's brand of populism comes with venomous race-baiting that spews forth the red-hot lies of a forked and wicked tongue.
We can hope for journalists with the courage and integrity of an Edward R. Murrow to challenge this would-be tyrant, to put the truth to every lie and publicly shame the devil for his outrages. We can hope for the likes of Joseph Welch, who demanded to know whether McCarthy had any sense of decency. Think of Gonzalo Curiel, the jurist Trump accused of persecuting him because of the judge's Mexican heritage. Curiel has revealed the soulless little man behind the curtain of Trump's alleged empire, the avaricious money-grubber who conned hard-working Americans out of their hard-won cash to attend his so-called "university."
And we can hope there still remain in the Republican Party at least a few brave politicians who will stand up to Trump, as some did McCarthy. This might be a little harder. For every Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham who have announced their opposition to Trump, there is a weaselly Paul Ryan, a cynical Mitch McConnell and a passel of fellow travelers up and down the ballot who claim not to like Trump and who may not wholeheartedly endorse him but will vote for him in the name of party unity.
As this headline in The Huffington Post aptly put it, "Republicans Are Twisting Themselves Into Pretzels To Defend Donald Trump." Ten GOP senators were interviewed about Trump and his attack on Judge Curiel's Mexican heritage. Most hemmed and hawed about their presumptive nominee. As Trump "gets to reality on things, he'll change his point of view and be, you know, more responsible." That was Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. Trump's comments were "racially toxic" but "don't give me any pause." That was Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Republican African-American in the Senate. And Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas? He said Trump's words were "unfortunate." Asked if he was offended, Jennifer Bendery writes, the senator "put his fingers to his lips, gestured that he was buttoning them shut, and shuffled away."
No profiles in courage there. But why should we expect otherwise? Their acquiescence, their years of kowtowing to extremism in the appeasement of their base, have allowed Trump and his nightmarish sideshow to steal into the tent and take over the circus. Alexander Pope once said that party spirit is at best the madness of the many for the gain of a few. A kind of infection, if you will -- a virus that spreads through the body politic, contaminating all. Trump and his ilk would sweep the promise of America into the dustbin of history unless they are exposed now to the disinfectant of sunlight, the cleansing torch of truth. Nothing else can save us from the dark age of unreason that would arrive with the triumph of Donald Trump.
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What Would the GOP Do Without Donald Trump?
On last night’s evidence, America is a country that applauds a bully, fears foreigners, and wants the system to be rigged for the rich.
Aug 07, 2015
CLEVELAND--What would the Republican Party do without Donald Trump? Although he sucks up all the air in the room, the angriest white man on the planet also turned what would otherwise have been the deadliest two hours on television into an electrifying illustration of the effect of celebrity in politics. From the very first question, when moderator Brett Baier, in a butter-wouldn't-melt tone, asked any candidate who refused to pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee to hold up his hand, and Trump, to resounding boos, raised his aloft, it was clear that Trump was off the leash and intended to remain that way.
A few minutes later, when Megyn Kelly challenged him, "You call women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals," Trump's retort--"Only Rosie O'Donnell"--seemed to get most of the audience on his side. But his swipe at Kelly--"I've been very nice to you, even though I don't have to be given the way you treat me, but I wouldn't do that."--again showed a thuggish side. It was only when, in response to Jeb Bush's timid declaration that the GOP frontrunner's language on immigration was "divisive," Trump roared back, "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even be talking about illegal immigration," that the invited audience declared itself firmly behind the Manhattan mogul.
Meanwhile, the rest of the field struggled to make themselves heard--and mostly failed. John Kasich's plausible imitation of a human being--not only would the Ohio governor not disown his 15-year-old twin daughters if either of them came out as gay, he recently attended a friend's same-sex wedding--led some commentators to name him the night's big winner. Though, it merely revealed the shame and cowardice of the other men on the platform.
These were men who vied to outdo one another in their denunciations of Planned Parenthood--hardly surprising from men united in their belief (or in Trump's case, lip service to the belief) that eggs become fully human the moment they are fertilized--and in their readiness to abandon diplomacy with Iran. Men who, with the sole exception of Kasich, would happily deprive the poor of healthcare on their first day in office. And who, without exception, viewed a vicious nativism as the path to power.
For anyone outside the Beltway bubble, the proceedings were profoundly depressing.
There were a few welcome distractions: the fireworks between Chris Christie and Rand Paul over the Kentucky senator's opposition to warrantless wiretapping, Mike Huckabee's declaration that "most of the income in this country is made by people at the top, who get income and capital gains" (has he been taking advantage of media indifference by slipping into Bernie Sanders rallies on the sly?), Marco Rubio's admission that "If this election is going to be a resume competition, then Hillary Clinton will be the next president."
But for anyone outside the Beltway bubble, the proceedings were profoundly depressing. One of the reasons elections matter is because they hold up a mirror to the kind of country we are--and the kind of country we want to be. On tonight's evidence, America (or at least that portion of America represented by the Ohio GOP's invited audience) is a country that applauds a bully, fears all foreigners, knows that the system is rigged to favor the rich--and will fight to the death to keep it that way. In a sane world, Donald Trump would have a bell hung around his neck and be greeted by cries of "Unclean! Unclean!" Instead, and unless Trump self-destructs, the rich seam of anger opened by his campaign might well bring him back here next year as the GOP nominee. Because, based on their performance tonight, no one on that stage is capable of stopping him.
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