It was just last week when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, still hoping to salvage what remains of the Republican Party’s traditional foreign policy vision, condemned Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and urged fellow conservatives to reject the far-right strongman. Three days later, Sen. J.D. Vance appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” If the Ohio Republican heard McConnell’s remarks, the senator apparently chose to ignore the advice.
” In case anyone needs a reminder, my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem explained a while back that Orbán’s right-wing agenda has included a series of steps to undermine democratic institutions, “through measures like consolidation of hundreds of media outlets under the control of political allies, gaming elections, and using emergencies like the coronavirus pandemic to dramatically expand executive power.” Vox published a related report in 2018 on “how democracy died in Hungary.