US Politics
An Overture to Illiberalism: Why the Budapest Rally is a Warning for American Democracy
President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, while onstage in Budapest, lavished public praise on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a nationalist leader friendly with Vladimir Putin whose strict immigration policies Trump extolled. This spectacle of America's top leaders celebrating a figure who has systematically dismantled democratic institutions in his own country, and doing so from foreign soil, represents a chilling embrace of authoritarianism that betrays the very American ideals they are sworn to protect.
