The Duran Podcast - Hungary After Orban: What the Election Means for Europe's Last Sovereignist

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Hungary After Orban: What the Election Means for Europe's Last Sovereignist

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the elections in Hungary and the landslide victory of Peter Magyar and his TISA party over Orban and Fidesh. Alexander, your thoughts on these election results. Well, we have had a lot of opinion polls pointing to this result, so one cannot say that it was unexpected. I'm going to make a number of observations about this. Now, Albert Berthorban has been the dominant figure in Hungary for 16 years. Over that length of time, inevitably there is a change in the circumstances that brought him to power 16 years ago. fewer people remember them, more people in any political system begin to develop resentments and concerns about what the leader, the government has been doing.

You usually see over a period of 16 years a certain swing away from a leader who has been there as long as he has. but there are a lot of other things that I think have to be said about this election. Firstly, we went to Hungary together in November 24. At that time, people were already talking about the fact that Peter Marguer looked like a potential threat to Orban's massive political dominance in Hungary the people we spoke to were all agreed that Marois, who was a former ally of Orban's in Fidesh, the dominant party in Hungary, that Marguer had basically gone over to the other side, that this was yet another of the many attempts that Orban's adversaries in Brussels had put together to try to try to.

to bring not just Orban down, but to bring Hungary back in line. About that, I personally have no doubt.

But there were considerable hopes in November 2024 when we were there that not only would Orbans, the goodwill

that Orban still had within Hungary helped him to see off this challenge, But the fact that Trump had just been elected, that he was expected to be a close political friend, an ally of Orban, that it looked as if these two leaders, Orban in Hungary and in Europe and Trump in the United States, would work out a policy together, which would be a policy basically to stabilize the situation in Europe, to end the country. conflict in Russia, to bring the conflict in Ukraine specifically under control. That seemed to give people a lot of hope. And I think what has happened is that since then, in the year and a half, since we

were there in Hungary, that hope has not been realized. And it has become not just clear that Orban has no influence over Trump, but that Trump has never been influenced or interested at all in working with Orban. And I think that this significantly undermined Orban's position in Hungary, because he came to be seen as a close ally of Trump's, and Trump's policies have been seen. in Europe as erratic and unpopular and they've been seen that way in Hungary itself and at the same time Orban has not been able to derive any benefit from that

because he's not been able to say to the Hungarian people yes I'm working successfully with the United States I'm putting Hungary on the map I am fighting for your interests and I can, through the influence I have with the American president, deliver for you. What instead people in Hungary have been seeing is a president of the United States who is uninterested and at times even erratically hostile to Orban and who's not helping Orban, as Orban has faced all sorts of challenges

from the European Union and has been unable as a result to get on top of the many economic pressures that Hungary has been facing. So in the end, people said, Orban, he achieved an awful lot, he's not delivering anymore, it's time for a change.

And that is a very difficult argument for a politician, a political leader, even one as dominant and in some ways as talented, as Orban has been to argue against? Well, there were the accusations of corruption and cronyism in his government that Magyar seized on. So that's very difficult for a politician to overcome. And Magyar, he capitalized on that. the economy was an issue that that the EU weaponized against Hungary. They withheld billions of euros in funds, in COVID funds, in various other funds.

They were fining a Hungary, I believe, a million euros a day or something, something around that amount because of the fact that Hungary did not want to fold their judiciary. under the European unions. They were being fined for that. And Durban was not able to get the real support of Trump, the real relief that Trump or the United States could have provided to Hungary, as Hungary was distancing itself from the EU, or at least taking on, say, the globalists in the EU, it was supposed to receive the backing of the United States that was going up against the globalists and never got that. And then you have the whole debacle of the negotiations, the round two of Alaska as well, where Trump threw Orban under the bus.

So, I mean, Vance arrived in Hungary a couple of days before the elections, but, you know, you got to imagine, was that really Trump showing support for Arban? He also posted about Arban on truth social. So what? Trump really didn't do anything to help Hungary. Help Arbonne, his friend, who was the only European leader who supported Trump during his 2024 campaign. All the other European leaders were aligned against Trump. Orban stuck his neck out, and he fully supported Trump.

Trump did not reciprocate. This is absolutely correct. Now, this is absolutely correct, but a lot of points to make. If it's about corruption, yes, I'm sure there is corruption in Hungary. There was even more corruption in Hungary. This is, I'm absolutely no for a fact, in Hungary before Orban came. Corruption allegations are always brought against political leaders that the European Union, the Brussels elite, don't like. Now, do anybody who knows anything about the way in which the European Union, the Brussels elite, don't like? Now, to anybody who knows anything about the way in which the European Union works,

and the extent to which the things that make it function, the idea of the European Union and its political allies in various member states posing as champions and paragon's on the issue of corruption, you know, anti-corruption crusaders is a ridiculous one. That kind of allegation would never have, I think, altered the balance, the electoral balance in Hungary. Had there not been significant stresses within the economy, had there not been pressure on living standards,

had not inflation been higher, had there not been periods, of recession in recent years. If they hadn't mean any of that, the corruption allegations would not have stuck because people would have seen through them. It's when people themselves feel that they can't afford things,

that life is becoming harder for them. That's when the issue of corruption becomes important because it's easy to run with the narrative that you are in difficulty and those who are in power are actually making, creating those difficulties for you because they are interested only in themselves and they're abusing their position to feather their own nest. So about the economic problems, you're absolutely right.

Now, when Orban became Prime Minister of Hungary 16 years ago, he took over a absolutely critical situation in Hungary. He stabilized it. There was a period of significant economic growth and rising living standards. And that, of course, was a major factor in consolidating support for him. What then happened, as we all know, is that he ran into hostility from the European Union, not because he was close to Russia, because he's never been actually particularly close to Russia.

He's been very critical of Russia, a point that was often made to us when we were in Hungary back in November 2024. Hungary, Bourbon was always about Hungary. It was never about Russia. The reasons that the Europeans didn't like him was not because he was close to the Russians. it was because he wasn't following the EU line,

not just on foreign policy issues, when they were against Hungarian interests, but also because he wasn't following the EU line on various policies within Hungary itself. The previous government, the government that had preceded Orban, which had been economically disastrous, was always in good standing. In Brussels, by contrast, what Brussels always does in these situations

is that it uses all the very considerable methods that it has to undermine an economy, to put pressure on it, it refuses funding, it creates difficulties, it does all of the things that we have personal bitter experience from, you and I, because we saw an extreme version of how they were used in Cyprus and Greece. Now, given that Hungary is a small country, and given that Hungary is surrounded basically on all sides by EU territory, in order to get to overcome that problem, what Alban needed was consistent help from his friend in the United States.

That was what people were looking for from Trump in Hungary and which I remember people talking about when we were in Budapest in November 2024. Not only did he not receive it but Trump repeatedly threw or won under a bus. Firstly there was the disastrous

summit or non-summit that Trump himself proposed after Alaska in Budapest in October of last year. There was this very difficult call between Putin and Trump. They were at that time arguing over a potential Tomahawk missile deliveries by the United States to Ukraine. It looked as if the relationship was about to break down. Trump said let's have a meeting in Budapest to see whether we can get Alaska back on track. Putin was not keen. He'd previously said that the next summit meeting after Alaska should be in Moscow.

He said that at the Alaska summit itself. He wanted movement anyway on Alaska from Trump before there was going to be a lot. summit meeting flying to Budapest would have been dangerous difficult for Putin because he'd have to circumnavigate hostile European airspace but nonetheless Putin said okay let's do it let's meet in Budapest. Orban is told about it. Orban rushes to organize the summit meeting and then Trump calls it off without any explanation so Putin who didn't want a summit like this in the first place, is very embarrassed. Orban is humiliated by his friend. Trump spends more time talking to Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, that he does

to Victor Orban. Stubb, as we know, is a fervid Europeanist, a fervid globalist. But Trump seems to favor him. He has relatively few meetings with Orban. It seems they do talk to each other, but it's obvious that Trump is not listening to Orban's advice. When Orban goes to Moscow and meets with the Russians, Trump doesn't say, I support that. And then we have, over the last few weeks,

this terrible business with the Drusba pipeline, the pipeline that's providing oil to Hungary from Russia. Zelensky blocks the Drusba pipeline. That creates severe problems in Hungary which compound the economic problems in Hungary itself. And, well, what does Trump do? He does nothing. He doesn't telephone Zelensky and tell Zelensky, this has got to stop.

You've got to reopen the Drushba pipeline. He basically leaves Orban hanging out to dry, to the point that Orban is left with no choice. But to ask Brussels for help, to try to get Brussels, to pursue. Swade Zelensky to reopen the Drushba pipeline. Brussels isn't going to do that. Of course they don't. They go through the motions of pretending that they will, but the fact remains the Drushba pipeline up to now remains closed.

So, Alban is not getting any help, any real help or support from the one person who could made a difference and he had some reason to believe was his friend and as you pointed out to me in discussions we had before this program there's then been the situation of the iran war the fact that urbun has for all kinds of reasons that we don't need to go into aligned Hungary very close to Israel over many years. The Iran war is unpopular across Europe. Orban is never consulted about this. There's no indication that his friend, the President of the United States in Washington, has even thought about Orban and what the effect of all of this war might be on Orban's position in Hungary. The war is launched and of course, unsurprisingly,

again, it's worked against all done in Hungary itself. If you put this all together, the result in the election becomes unsurprising. It's interesting. He needed the U.S.'s support, say six months ago,

in order to strengthen his position against an opposition that was heavily backed by the European Union. And then with the Iran war, he was stuck because even though the United States was not providing the real support on the surface, he had tethered himself to the sicking ship.

That is Donald J. Trump. And that worked against him in the end. And Orban couldn't have come out, say, a month ago and said, okay, Trump's lost his mind. I don't support the war. I don't support what the U.S. is doing. Or I don't support Netanyahu, and I don't support Israel. He aligned himself with these guys. Absolutely. Well, I'm going to say this.

We went when we were in Hungary in November 2024, I mean, we and others who were with us tried to make the point to some of Orban's officials, because we met them, that this overly close alignment with Israel might be politically unwise. I mean, we didn't know what was going to happen over the next year and a half. We didn't anticipate then that we would now find ourselves in this war with Iran. But I think that was a mistake. I mean, I don't think that it made a huge amount of sense for Hungary to go so far out on a limb by being so publicly close to Netanyahu as Prime Minister of Israel.

I mean, Orban actually invited Netanyahu to Hungary at a time when, of course, as we know, Netanyahu already had problems with the international criminal court and the warrants and all of that. So, I mean, looking back, that was unwise. But that was what happened. In the case of Trump, I think, and that's the really important one, in the end. It made political sense for

Orban to tether himself to the personality, the political force that, if you like, was Donald Trump in America, because he needed Trump's help basically to defeat the globalists

in Brussels. And the two could have done it, by the way. I mean, the combination of Orban and Trump, if they'd worked on it together, it could have worked. But instead of that happening, we saw Trump prefer to talk to people like Macron and to people like Rutter and to people like Alexander Stubb. And instead of this relationship with Trump being an asset, it'd become a deadweight and it pulled him down.

Well, Trump doesn't have any interest in defeating the globalists. He has an interest in defeating Russia and defeating China and going to war with Iran. Anyway, yeah, that's the reality of it. Well, that is absolutely the reality of it. But, of course, the great irony of all of this in Europe is that in Europe itself, even if that is true, which it is, by the way, the globalists in Europe don't like him. and never will. Trump has played, I mean, it's not exclusively Trump.

I mean, there were other factors in play as well, mistakes that Orban made, steps that the European Union took. But Trump has contributed to the political demise of the one political leader in Europe. who was genuinely and sincerely interested in being his friend. So that's it. I mean, being friends with Donald Trump is not good for your political health.

Yeah, not now. But you've got to keep Europe focused on keeping Project Ukraine going, if you're in the United States. So in that case, I guess Orban worked against, against the US. Well, ultimately, yes. And I mean, I think this is the other thing I want to say. I mean, Orban is an extremely capable, a very brilliant politician.

I'm not convinced there's any way back from him. I mean, there will undoubtedly be a swing back against this party that is now in control in Hungary. But it's most unlikely that the EU, will allow a political opening in Hungary for Victor Alban again. Just to say, I mean, it's not going to happen. I mean, we saw what happened in Romania. In the case of Hungary, they're going to double and treble and quadruple down,

and they're going to do everything they possibly can to prevent it. Urbanism, the political style, the political, you know, the policies that were associated. with Orban in Hungary are now ended. I mean, there is no return. Now the EU has got their, their claws in Hungary, firmly in Hungary, and they're not going to allow anything to change that. We're going to have Hungary join the hero.

I mean, they're going to say that that's necessary to contain inflation. And people will believe it, because people always do. and so they're going to do that they're going to use all the mechanisms and there will probably be prosecutions you know they'll do all sorts of things and of course they will say as they always also do that re-electing Orban is a threat to democracy

and they will use the various instruments that they have in the courts and the legal systems and whatever which will now be changed because Magua now has a constitutional majority in the Hungarian parliament so he can change the constitution. He can do all kinds of things. So they will make absolutely sure that Victor Orban never comes back. And I think it was an extraordinarily strong play that he played for 16 years,

but they've now caught up with him. Yeah, so Magyar is going to, he's going to travel to Poland, to Warsaw, to see his good globalist friend, Tusk, who absolutely supported him. He's going to go to Austria and he's going to reconstitute the whole Visigrad group. He's going to go to Brussels. I imagine Zelensky will be in Budapest any day now. The 90 billion will go to Project Ukraine. The European Union is going to release. the 20 billion in funds to Hungary, but that money's going to go right out the door and go and go to

the military and to Ukraine. Yeah, absolutely. And this is why the globalists are absolutely ecstatic about this. Their big payday is coming very, very soon. Zelensky's over the moon. He's super happy about everything. Soros posted, the sun, Soros posted, and he's absolutely happy about this result. Hungary is now just going to be folded.

under the whole EU project to be disappeared and just become another small country inside of the EU, which they're going to just completely crash. Well, absolutely. That's exactly what's going to happen. It's going to, I mean, everything, all the things that we saw that made it distinctive, that made it different,

that made it successful in so many ways. And they made it stable too, by the way. All of that is going to be undermined. because they're going to be even more determined to take all of these things apart because they don't want under any circumstances to allow any way back for Orban's return. And of course the other thing that's going to happen

is that Hungary is going to dismantle all the structures that he took to control its borders. But again, there's a lot of those, a lot of talk about, a lot of criticism of Orban about that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the borders are done. The borders are done. The borders are done. The border issues are, they're going to dismantle those. And the various policies to support families, which, by the way, just to say, would once upon the time that being considered left-wing policies, I can remember that that was the case. But anyway, they're also going to be dismantled, too. The European Union will not want

any of that to continue. Because Hungary did take this independent course for 16 years, the determination to wipe that all out is going to be even greater. In three, four, five years, how long is Magyar's mandates? Four years or five years? Four years? I mean, he won't be there. He himself is unlikely to be there for very long. But the next leaders who will follow him will be, very much, it will be even closer in some respects to the EU mainstream, even than Marguer is. Not that Marguer is, you know, different in any way in terms of policies and ideas, but he was a former associate of Orban himself. He has an unusual personality, apparently. I'm not following all of this. He's the sort of person.

that is useful as a kind of icebreaker to break through. But once he's done that and he's changed Hungary, well, they will get somebody who they will see as more conventional and more reliable. And Magua will be given some nice position, maybe in Brussels, maybe somewhere else. But you will see that he won't be Prime Minister for Hungary for very long. That is my prediction.

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