Tangle - Orbán loses in Hungary.

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

On Sunday, Péter Magyar’s Tisza Party defeated Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party in Hungary’s parliamentary elections, unseating the 16-year incumbent. With 98% of the vote counted, Orbán and Fidesz had won 56 parliamentary seats, while Magyar and Tisza Party won 137 seats, giving it a two-thirds supermajority. Orbán had been supported by the Trump administration, which viewed him as a key ally in the European Union (EU). Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!Behind the scenes.Once a month, we release a members-only newsletter called Press Pass that pulls back the curtain on our work, shares insider updates on our business, and lets you in on the big debates and events taking place behind the scenes. Each edition also includes a profile of a team member. This month, Isaac wrote about his experience engaging with Gen Z on college campuses, and we profiled Senior Editor Will Kaback. You can check it out here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, and today’s “Under the radar.” story ⁠here⁠ and the “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think are the implications of Hungary’s election? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Audrey Moorehead and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of our take. This is Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead, and today we're going to be covering the recent Hungarian election results. But before we get into that, once a month, we release a member-only podcast called Press Pass that pulls back the curtain on our work here at Tangle, shares insider updates on our business, and lets you in on the big debates and events taking place behind the scenes. Each edition also includes a profile of a team member. This month, Isaac is writing about his experience engaging with Gen Z, shout out to my generation, on college campuses, and he's profiling senior editor Will Kback. You can check it out on whatever

platform you listen to the Tangle podcast on. Now I'm going to be handing it off to John for today's topic, and then I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Audrey, and welcome everybody. here are your quick hits for today. First up, Representative Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California, announced his resignation from Congress as he faces multiple sexual misconduct allegations. Swalwell continues to deny the accusations, but also said he must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make. Separately, Representative Tony Gonzalez, the Republican from Texas,

announced his intention to resign from Congress after acknowledging an affair with his former staffer. Number two, U.S. and Iranian officials may return to Pakistan later this week to resume negotiations over the war. Number three, a federal judge dismissed President Donald Trump's defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, which the president brought in response to the outlet publishing a letter allegedly sent by Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. The judge found that Trump's suit did not claim actual malice to meet the requirement

to pursue defamation claims. However, the judge said the president can amend his lawsuit and refile it. Number four, authorities charged a 20-year-old man with attempted murder and other charges for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's house. Prosecutor said the man was also carrying a list of artificial intelligence company leaders when he was arrested. And number five, Liberal Party victories in Canada's special elections on Monday secured a majority government for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney,

allowing him to pass legislation without opposition party support. Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, has conceded what he called a painful defeat in a pivotal election that's ended his 16 years in power. With most of the votes counted, Orban told supporters that he had congratulated opposition leader, Peter Madiard, who is set to become Hungary's new prime minister after his TISA party won a clear majority. On Sunday, Peter Meijar's Tisa party defeated Prime Minister Victor Orban's Fidesz party in Hungary's parliament. elections, unseeding the 16-year incumbent. With 98% of the vote counted, Orban and Fidesz had won 56 parliamentary seats, while Meijar and Tisa Party won 137 seats, giving it a two-thirds supermajority. Orban had been supported by the Trump administration, which viewed him as a key ally in the European Union.

For context, Hungary holds parliamentary elections every four years, allowing citizens with the Hungarian address to vote for both a local representative and a national. political party. Citizens living abroad can only vote for a party. The 199 seats in the country's National Assembly are divided between local district winners and proportionally among national party members based on vote totals. If a party achieves a two-thirds supermajority, it can enact changes to Hungary's electoral system and some parts of its constitution. Orban, 62, served as prime minister for one term in 1998 to 2002, returned to power in 2010, and has served in that role since. During his time in office, Orban championed conservative policies, including crackdowns on immigration and rollbacks of

progressive social initiatives. He also opposed many EU policies and developed a friendly relationship with Russia and President Vladimir Putin, speaking out against European aid for Ukraine. Many critics accused him of weakening Hungary's democratic institutions by expanding executive control over the judiciary and suppressing independent media among other actions. Orban himself explicitly rejected the principles of liberal governance, saying in 2014 that he was building an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. Orban has developed a strong relationship with President Donald Trump, who pledged on Friday to use the full economic might of the United States to strengthen Hungary's economy if Orban's fit his party maintained its majority. Vice President J.D. Vance campaigned for

Orban last week, telling a crowd at a rally, I admire what you're fighting for. I am here because President Trump and I wish for your success, and we are fighting right here with you. After the majority of votes were tallied on Sunday, Orban conceded the race, but said he will remain active as an opposition leader. Majar, 45, is set to become the new prime minister just two years after leaving the Fidesz party to revive the Teza party over what he said was widespread corruption under Orban. Tisa is viewed as a center-right party, but it supports stronger ties with the EU and rejects Russian influence. In a victory speech on Sunday, Majar said, we have liberated Hungary and taken back our country. Also on Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen congratulated Majer, writing,

Hungary has chosen Europe. Europe has always chosen Hungary. A country reclaims its European path. Neither President Trump nor Vice President Vance has commented on the result. Today, we'll break down the results of Hungary's election with views from the right, left, and Raiders in Hungary, and then, Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead will give her take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. Some on the right see warning signs for Trump in Orban's laws. Others say Orban's political ideas will survive beyond his time and power.

In National Review, Henry Olson wrote about Orban's total defeat. It's not hard to figure out why Orban was decisively rejected. His government had allowed cronyism, the opposition, calls it corruption, to flourish. That was made worse by the fact that the economy had been stagnant for four years, registering almost no real GDP growth, Olson wrote. Majar proved to be politically talented, rallying disaffected Fidesz voters and the old opposition to his side. He ran on a platform that borrowed elements from Fides, anti-Ukraine war, opposition to migration, with criticisms about corruption, the slow economy, and problematic relations with the European Union. The results

should alarm President Trump and Vice President Vance. They committed American prestige to support Orban and got annihilated. Their intervention did not help Orban, but it certainly hurt Trump, even more with the European leaders whose support he needs in the Middle East, Olson said. The Hungary elections should also impel Trump and Vance to look at the state of their own electoral prospects. Orban kept trying to change the subject rather than deal with the issues voters actually cared about, like growth and inflation. Similarly, the economy consistently ranks among the most important issues among voters stateside.

In Rod Dreher's diary on Substack, Rod Dreher wrote about Orban going, but Orbanism coming to Europe. Major is not a figure of the political left, which remains unpopular in Hungary. What he basically offered voters is Orban, but without the corruption. On the key issues that infuriate Brussels about Orban's Hungary, his hard line on migrants and asylum seekers, and his adamant desire to keep Hungary out of the Ukraine war, there's no difference between Orban and Majar, except that Majar might be even tougher than Orban on migration, Dreher said. When he takes power,

Majar is going to have to either disappoint his allies in the EU establishment or disappoint millions of his voters. Personally, I expect him to be the cat's paw of Brussels. It is undoubtedly true that populist, sovereignists, and national conservatives have lost their most visible champion. But again, this result does not discredit the cause. Orban lost because the economy is poor and his party was far too tolerant of corruption. Hungarians are no more in favor of mass migration and European involvement in the Ukraine war today

than they were yesterday, Dreher wrote. In fact, Orban's tragedy is that European voters are finally coming around to his point of view on the importance of stronger borders. Orban may be going, but Orbanism is coming to Western Europe. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left celebrates Orban's loss, and many see it as an embarrassment for Trump. Some see Majar's victory as a blow against a liberal forces globally. In Salon, Andrew O'Hir said, Maga and Putin bet big on Hungary's election.

It backfired. As Hungarian journalist Ivan von Nagy put it, Orban survived for so long through an ingenious pattern of shadowboxing against an ever-shifting cast of make-believe enemies, telling the conservative and nationalistic elements of the Hungarian public that only he can save them from dark-skinned immigrants, European bureaucrats, meddling American liberals, the globalist plots of Hungarian-born George Soros, LGBT activists, gender ideology, and wokeness, O'Hare wrote.

This time around, it seems that Hungarian voters were more concerned about their stagnant economy. Orban's downfall will feel like a major setback to various strands of the transatlantic right, especially to leading figures in the National Conservative Movement, like Vance, Stephen Miller, Peter Thiel, and Tucker Carlson, O'Hare said. If Vance's trip to Budapest shifted the campaign at all,

it only amplified the scale of Orban's defeat. Whatever happens in Hungary from here on out, the story is familiar. The left is powerless and almost invisible, but the far right once again turned out to be its own worst enemy. All right, that is it for what the right and the left are saying, which brings us to what writers in Hungary are saying. Some writers worry that Majar is arrogant and out of touch.

Others say Majar has an opportunity to reassert democratic norms in Hungary. In Hungary today, Daniel Demi criticized Peter Majar's victory speech. Majar characterized his win as no less than the victory of truth against lies, saying that the election is a reflection of Hungarians' decision to reject deceit and betrayal. With hubris bordering the obscene, he even compared his electoral success to the anti-Hapsburg revolution of 1848-49, and in a matter that will be taken as an insult to the memory of our anti-communist freedom fighters to the Hungarian uprising of 1956, Demi said.

With his trademark pomposity, he called his party's success a golden date in Hungarian freedom, a victory over those who have allegedly oppressed and betrayed them. One of the biggest genuine failures of the Orban government was its inability to bring people guilty of corruption, sexual violence, or fraud to justice, both from the left and from the right of the political spectrum, Demi wrote. But the bullying tone that we have heard on election night is only an innocent taster of what's to come, and albeit Tisa voters might feel that this is okay, or even desirable, as long as it solely affects the Orban crowd. It requires a generous amount of naivete to think that, with time, a very short one for that, they themselves will feel the

consequences of this shift towards the politics of envy and retribution. In the New York Times, Stefano Batoni called Orban's defeat an astounding achievement. For the past 16 years, Mr. Orban has built a complex system of institutional traps designed to hardwire his power and paralyze any successor. At the heart of this system is the 2011 fundamental law, which replaced the Constitution and can be amended only by a two-thirds majority in Parliament, but Tony said. Mr. Orban didn't stop there. He and his party appropriated large sectors of the economy, allocating public resources, including both national and European funds to supporters. Taken together, it adds up to a tightly bound clientelest

system. But the economy has been stagnating since the pandemic, with few remedies in sight. The trade deficit with China has quadrupled in the past decade, increasing to over 10 billion from 2.6 billion. Inflation skyrocketed to 25 percent during the pandemic and household consumption levels remain low. That has laid the groundwork for Mr. Orban's defeat, but Tony wrote. Hungary has a golden opportunity. The Teaser Party's success shows that democracy can be peacefully restored by the people, even against entrenched incumbents, and when great powers intervene to help their protégés. Rather than a laboratory of autocracy, Hungary could become a lighthouse of democracy. All right, let's head over to Audrey for her take.

Thanks, John. Here is my take. Victor Orban's loss has local implications for Hungary, of course, but it also has global implications, and particularly acute lessons for the United States, as it represents the next chapter in the Western world's relationship with liberal democracy. First, though, a slight detour. As I've written about Entangle before, I grew up in the conservative small town of Lynchburg, Tennessee. Basically, every adult I knew growing up was a conservative. I don't think I even knew it was possible to be anything else until I got social media in middle school. To me, conservatism was just the way of life.

And as I grew up, I developed an interest in American history, particularly through reading about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, and the values that motivated my family and neighbors also began to resonate with me. Admittedly, I've always been a bit nerdy about this stuff compared to others in my small town community, but I still understood our political convictions to be cut from the same cloth. The people in my town genuinely loved our country and loved its political project. My dad or granddad might not quote Thomas Jefferson at you,

but they'd speak highly of the importance of a small federal government, expands of personal freedoms and high public order. That was as true for my family as it was for almost any other in Lynchburg. When I went to college, I was exposed to a very different environment, the overwhelmingly liberal Harvard University. I wasn't super politically involved at first, but I soon wanted to join some of the conservative organizations on campus, hoping to meet more people who had the values I'd been raised with.

I also hoped that maybe they were a little more nerdy about it, like me. Soon enough, though, I began encountering a peculiar. your problem. In one conservative club meeting, I mentioned that some policy proposal seemed too expansive of government power. A club leader replied that small government had never been a conservative priority. Then in another club, I was mocked for declaring the greatest achievement of the Western world to be the Enlightenment. The more time I spent around these Harvard conservatives, the more I came to understand that many of them were operating within a different kind of conservative framework, a set of ideas that I now would describe as post-liberalism.

Post-liberalism is the idea that the liberal project of the West, exemplified by the Enlightenment-era values I cherish, of personal freedoms and free exchange, is fundamentally flawed, that late-stage liberalism produces a fragmented, stratified society, and that those late stages are upon us. Post-liberals argue that liberal democracies like the U.S. system eventually produced great economic inequality and the insistence on freedom of religion

leave citizens without a clear purpose for life. Instead, in order to create a more equal and more virtuous society, we need to return to older systems of government that can express more power over a nation's moral agenda, such as, by more explicitly promoting Christian values, while emphasizing the government's duty

to provide economically for its citizens. Vice President J.D. Vance is probably the most prominent post-liberal in American politics. I read his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegie, to better understand his meteoric political rise after his VP nod in the summer of 2024. In the book, Vance eloquently and hauntingly describes the economic and personal destitution of his Rust Belt hometown and its residents. He attributes these dire straits to a fundamental cultural problem with the people themselves. They are stuck in a dependent victim mindset, unwilling to abandon the honor culture that so badly harmed them. But somewhere

along the line, Vance changed his tune. By the time he ran for Senate in 2022 and on the Trump ticket in 2024, he started attributing white working-class Americans' problems to wider society. He argued that the American government had failed them, and that Americans ought to vote for a government that would, A, offer more economic assistance, and B, promote stronger cultural values. That message is the same one that Victor Orban spent his 16 years in power in Hungary advancing. He proclaimed the importance of a government that would promote Hungarian pride and defend Western Christian morals. That message made Orban attractive to American right-wing intellectuals like J.D. Vance or Rod Dreher

because it expressed the same post-liberal vision they thought would revitalize the West. And their shared messaging prompted Vance's enthusiastic endorsement and campaign support in the lead-up to this year's Hungarian elections. Of course, Victor Orban wasn't elected on some promise to create a post-liberal society. Instead, he was elected and consistently re-elected because he struck a chord with the populist anxieties of the people of Hungary. After a single term as Prime Minister at the turn of the century, Orban returned to power in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis when he and his Fadesh party promised economic

revitalization. Over the years, he continued to win by appealing to Hungarian anxieties over illegal immigration during Europe's migrant crisis. He didn't make his more illiberal actions like packing the Supreme Court or massing. media control the centerpiece of his political campaigns. Instead, he focused on the real anxieties of the citizenry. Nevertheless, illiberalism was a fixed, load-bearing plank in his platform. That focus on citizen anxieties, more than any other feature of the philosophy, is what makes post-liberal populism so compelling. Victor Orban and J.D. Vance speak to real

anxieties among the people they represent. My post-liberal college classmates were responding to the real-world issues they saw. Family members and communities' in poverty, politically voiceless, in mental and spiritual crisis. Even the members of my community, who aren't political junkies or self-identified post-liberals, feel a genuine discontent with modern life. And for them, Trump and Bance's campaign message, which promised a revival of their social values, as well as their economic status, resonated more deeply than Kamala Harris' message. I, for one, still believe in the liberal democratic project of America, like my family and friends back home do. But if we want to preserve that project, we have to be able to understand people's real

anxieties and concerns about cultural fragmentation, while defending liberal democracy as the best way to address them. I think Pater Majar in Hungary, as a right-leaning politician himself, provides a roadmap for Western conservatism that avoids post-liberal ideology. Madjar shares some of Orban's more restrictive immigration policies, and he promised voters that his party would seek a solution to their economic woes. But Majar also emphasized in his campaign and his victory speech the importance of allying with the rest of Europe, of resisting the influence of the definitively autocratic Russia, and of rooting out the corrupt and anti-democratic dealings that had flourished under Orban. In short, Madjar was successful because he both understood the anxieties that had led to Orban's rise,

as well as the anxieties about Orban's governance itself. Madgar's victory and Orban's defeat show that post-liberalism isn't the inevitable evolution of conservatism. Indeed, it provides a roadmap for American conservatives who still believe in the Enlightenment principles the U.S. was founded on, and who opposed the slide into authoritarianism that popular discontent makes possible. Any Republican who wants to challenge J.D. Vance for party leadership in 2008 can use Majar's methods, sympathize with discontent, criticize the excess, and provide a vision of a path forward that emphasizes American ideals and the heritage of liberal democracy itself.

Orban's graceful concession contains lessons for Americans, too. Despite much worry and hand-wringing over democratic erosion and Hungary, Orban was still voted out of power through the democratic process. He's leaving, quietly and respectfully, with well-wishers' party. I think that, too, is a lesson for us in the United States. Respectful political disagreement is still possible. Western democratic values can withstand criticism and assault. and post-liberalism cannot overwhelm the marketplace of ideas.

That's it for my take. Thanks so much for listening. Now I'm handing it over to Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with a staff concurrence. This is Managing Editor Ari Weizman with a concurrence to Audrey's take today. I really want to dig in on one of Audrey's last points, that Orban's removal from power and his voluntary concession show that the rumors of democracy's demise have been greatly exaggerated. In general, the way we buy into the power of ascended political movements is always exaggerated.

From the fall of the Soviet Union, through the consolidation of Europe to the rise of Obama, then the rise of the Tea Party, Brexit, Orban, Trump, they're all responses to their predecessors just as much as they're the beginnings of new movements. And when new movements falter, they struggle to defeat the counter movements that they themselves engender. The ascendent right won't ascend forever. The only immutable rule in politics is that change is going to come. That's it. We'll send it back to Audrey and John for the rest of the pod. We'll be right back after this quick break.

Thanks, Ari. Now for today's reader question. Today's question comes from Roxanne, who asks, if mail-in voting continues, how will that be affected if the U.S. Postal Service shuts down? Also, if private delivery companies like UPS replace the U.S. Postal Service, what guarantees would there be to ensure steps to avoid fraud? Here's our answer. It's impossible to say exactly how mail-in voting would be impacted if the United States Postal Service is no longer operational. A lot would still need to happen for that to become a reality,

but the agency is facing a protracted financial crisis that could come to a head in the next year. At this time, FedEx and UPS say they are not able to consistently reach remote areas to ensure ballots are delivered and picked up. On the flip side, the USPS has a, quote, universal service obligation, requiring it to offer affordable service to everyone. While Amazon has been floated as a potential candidate to add delivery coverage,

they do not accept packages from residential mailboxes. And as of now, Amazon relies on the USPS to deliver millions of packages a year. Oversight from public entities gives USPS an added layer of assurance to handle the extremely high stakes of mail-in voting. If it were to shut down, other private carriers likely wouldn't be able to deliver to many remote customers and would face more oversight in order to be able to deliver mail-in ballots. However, this is all still hypothetical. Although the USPS is reportedly considering service cuts to manage an ongoing funding crisis,

it is currently staffed to pick up and distribute mail from all residential mailboxes six days a week. The USPS may raise some of its prices or ask Congress to remove some restrictions on its retirement funds to remain solvent rather than cut its service. That's it for today's reader question, so now back to John for the rest of the the podcast. Thanks, Audrey. Today we're trying a new segment called This Day in History. On April 14, 1865, while watching a play with his wife at Ford's Theater, President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by Southern actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilts Booth. After a brief scuffle with Major Henry Rathbone, who was attending the performance with the president,

Booth leapt from the president's box onto the stage and shouted the Virginia state motto, Six Semper Terranes, a line credited to Marcus Brutus during the assassination of Julius Caesar, meaning thus always to tyrants. Booth fled the scene amid the resulting confusion. Meanwhile, the wounded president was carried from the theater to the house across the street. Despite attempts to save his life, the president died there in the early morning of April 15th. Lincoln's death, just a month into his second term and two days after the formal surrender of the Confederacy, ultimately changed the course of the planned reconstruction of the nation.

And last but not least, our have a nice day story. For years in some Philadelphia schools, children were not getting recess or breaks during their day. The problem was so bad that children in some schools reportedly wore diapers. Two years of advocacy from the parent group Lift Every Voice Philly has changed things for the better. The Philadelphia School Board has agreed to reforms, including guaranteed daily recess and unrestricted bathroom access for students. I just was a parent that cared and didn't like what was going on in my kid's school. Wilson said. And now I can actually go home and tell my kids, look on the news. Mommy did this. We won this. Talkbeat has this story and there's a link in today's episode description.

All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to readtangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac, Audrey and the rest of the crew, this is John Long signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas.

Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.