Long Before Hungary, the Right Was Fixated on Another Country

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JOSHUA TAIT argues: Long Before Hungary, the Right Was Fixated on Another Country.

Prominent conservatives have discovered Hungary and its “twenty-first century dictator,” Viktor Orbán. This week, Tucker Carlson will be relocating his top-rated show to Hungary, as he did for a week last August, bringing Orbán into the homes of hundreds of thousands of Fox viewers.

Carlson may be the most high-profile conservative to alight on Hungary, but he’s far from the first. Christopher Caldwell profiled Orbán in the Claremont Review of Books in 2019; former National Review editor John O’Sullivan moved to Budapest, where he has run the Danube Institute, a think tank funded by Orbán’s government, since 2017; the American Conservative’s Rod Dreher spent four months last year in Budapest under the auspices of the Danube Institute, largely singing its praises; while a number of others, including Patrick Deneen, Chris DeMuth, Sohrab Ahmari, Yoram Hazony, and Jordan Peterson have made pilgrimages, in several cases meeting with Orbán himself. Early this year, Donald Trump endorsed Orbán for re-election.

Hungary’s appeal to the American right is straightforward. Among the world’s leaders, Tucker Carlson pronounced, only Orbán identifies as a Western conservative. He takes pride in standing athwart European Union integration, internationalism, immigration, and “wokeism.” He champions the Hungarian nation and the Christian West.

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Newt Gingrich's recklessness with partisanship was a precursor of where we are today, and now Trump's followers, like Steve Bannon and Ron DeSantis, are trying to one-up Trump. Bill Kristol joins Charlie Sykes on today's podcast.

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🚨OVERTIME 🚨

Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Even if it wasn’t great, it could be worse, you could have been Odell Beckham, Jr. and took your salary in bitcoin.

Who would have predicted? MacGruber is a COVID truther…

Matt Gaetz predicts the age of Aquarius… And a lot of people are going to jail, apparently!

Redistricting mini golf… Can you beat my score of 36? If you did, send me your score and I’ll feature it tomorrow.

Who’s watching you? An interesting experiment about how honest people are.

“But being loud does not make you plentiful.” Will Leitch on the anti-vaxx minority as extreme fringe.

Why Trump Is Headed for the Ditch Once Again… Jack Shafer at Politico writes:

The DeSantis takeover move is made possible by Trump’s flagging support among Republicans. As Trump has moved out of the public eye (and the social media orbit) he has become less vital to party members. Today, reporter Byron York of the conservative Washington Examiner noted that a new poll shows that fewer Republicans are describing themselves more as Trump supporters (36 percent) than as party supporters (56 percent). This is Trump’s worst showing ever in that poll, indicating generous room for a different Republican, perhaps even a Trumpish one to displace the original. (Not everybody sees an opportunity for DeSantis. The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last, a Never-Trumper, writes this week that the ex-president would crush DeSantis, whom he calls a “phony” who will join in the morgue all the other Republicans who have run against Trump.)

Don’t sue us… We’ll sue you? A wild story out of Arizona.

‘Take it back…’ There are still good Republicans. Few as they may be…

I bought a boat… Never a good idea, unless you’re a millionaire…

That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.