I believe Victor Orban, the oligarchical, autocratic leader of Hungary, has had a large hand in orchestrating our administration. It is Orban’s “playbook” that the conservatives followed in their Project 2025. Orban was a speaker at several CPACs going back to 2016. Orban visited our current president several times at his home before this past election. Then the election was taken as a “mandate” to reshape our government.

Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic states, “In many ways, Hungary is about as different from the U.S. as it is possible to be: small, poor, homogeneous. (But, as an unelected) government contractor, sets fire to our civil service and makes decisions about the departments that regulate him; as the FBI and the Justice Department are captured by partisans who will never prosecute their colleagues for corruption; as inspectors general are fired and rules about conflicts of interest are ignored, America is spinning quickly in the direction of Hungarian populism, Hungarian politics and Hungarian justice. But that means Hungarian stagnation, Hungarian corruption and Hungarian poverty lie in our future too.”

I also was disturbed to think this is actually coming to be in my own country.

Why is fashioning our government to be like that of Hungary’s a good thing? Is this what we really want for our United States?

Anne Glazier
U.S. Navy veteran
Farmington