Are we going down the same path Hungary went down and rejected yesterday?

We do not need another warning. We already have one from the 1940s. And now we have another from Hungary after 2010.

That is why the comparison matters.

When people place Orbán’s Hungary after 2010 beside Project 2025 in America, they are not saying the two systems are identical in structure or law. They are saying something more important: the governing logic is disturbingly similar. In both cases, the vision is not merely to win office. It is to capture the machinery of the state and bend it to ideological control.

Here is the side-by-side that matters.

Hungary 2010: Viktor Orbán used political victory to begin reshaping the constitutional order. His government centralized power, altered institutions, and reduced the independence of bodies meant to check the ruling party.

Project 2025: Heritage’s blueprint calls for a far more tightly controlled executive branch, a federal bureaucracy aligned with presidential power, and aggressive use of removal authority over officials who resist the administration’s mission.

The shared message is plain: neutral government is a threat to movement politics.

Hungary 2010: Fidesz installed loyalists across the courts, media oversight, prosecution, and other state institutions, often with long terms that outlasted ordinary election cycles.

Project 2025: the document treats resistant career officials as obstacles and argues for Schedule F-style restructuring and stronger political control over the permanent state.

The shared belief is this: institutions should not stand above the leader’s agenda. They should enforce it.

Hungary 2010: Orbán weakened checks and balances so deeply that the European Parliament later said Hungary could no longer be considered a full democracy, calling it a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.

Project 2025: the plan advances a maximalist view of presidential control and seeks to weaken the independence of agencies that were deliberately designed to be insulated from raw partisan command.

Again, the rhyme is unmistakable: restraints are reframed as enemies. Accountability becomes “bias.” Oversight becomes “sabotage.”

Hungary 2010: cultural grievance became a governing tool. The Orbán state fused nationalism, anti-immigrant politics, anti-LGBTQ politics, and “traditional family” rhetoric into a moralized state identity.

Project 2025: it calls for rolling back protections tied to sexual orientation and gender identity, targeting what it calls “gender ideology,” and advancing a “biblically based” understanding of family.

This is not incidental. It is how authoritarian politics recruits fear and baptizes control.

Hungary 2010: Orbán cultivated a Russia-friendly posture that repeatedly strained Hungary’s standing with the rest of Europe, especially over Ukraine and rule-of-law disputes.

America now: Orbán has become a celebrated model for parts of the American right, and AP documented direct comparisons between Orbán’s governance and Trump’s second-term movement.

This matters because admiration is never accidental. Leaders praise in others what they long to normalize at home.

And what did Hungary receive after years of this?

Not renewal.

Not national strength.

Not shared prosperity.

Hungary ended up with democratic erosion, corruption concerns, frozen EU funds, and severe inflation. Reuters reported that inflation became among the worst in the European Union, and current Eurostat figures place Hungary well below the EU average in GDP per capita. The strongman script always promises greatness. It more often delivers capture, stagnation, and decline.

Then the people answered.

In April 2026, Hungarian voters removed Orbán after 16 years in power. Reuters reported roughly 80% turnout and a two-thirds parliamentary majority for Péter Magyar’s Tisza party, with markets rallying on hopes of restored rule of law and repaired relations with Europe. Hungary’s voters looked at what had been done in the name of national greatness and said: enough.

So here is the question for America.

If we already have the warning of Europe in the 1940s,

and we now have the warning of Hungary after 2010,

why would we knowingly rehearse the same seduction?

Trust the leader.

Distrust the institutions.

Mock the press.

Scapegoat the vulnerable.

Call cruelty strength.

Call domination patriotism.

That road does not make a nation great. It makes a nation captive.

We do not have to go down the same road.

But history is merciless with people who mistake warnings for invitations.