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‘Trumpian revolution’ cracks: Viktor Orban loses Hungary, MAGA fractures at home over Iran war
Hungary sees end of Orban's 16-year reign and his self-styled model of “illiberal democracy”. Trump had endorsed this as a MAGA blueprint.
As elections in Hungary ended Prime Minister Viktor Orban's 16-year grip on power, the day carried consequences far beyond his country. For Donald Trump, whose administration had staked its diplomatic prestige on keeping his closest European ally in office, the fall of Orban arrives at a moment of crisis at home. Realtor-turned-rightwing-hero Trump’s support is already splintering at home due to the Iran war that very few in his ‘MAGA’ base wanted at all.
Away in Europe, Hungary saw a record voter turnout, after which Orban conceded defeat to Peter Magyar as early trends from counting came in.
Prediction market Polymarket had already placed the probability of opposition leader Magyar becoming Hungary's next PM above 80%. Around $67 million had been traded on the question. Polls closed at 7 pm local time (10:30 pm IST), with partial results trickling in an hour later.
The vote represented the starkest challenge yet to Orban's self-styled model of "illiberal democracy". He had gone from a left-wing radical to a far-right one.
Trump repeatedly endorsed his far-right stance as a blueprint for his Make America Great Again or MAGA governance.
Orban's centre-right rival, Peter Magyar, a former insider who broke with the ruling party Fidesz in 2024, led in independent polls.
Who is Peter Magyar?
Magyar, 45, has built his campaign on middle-class drawing-room-discussion issues that also resonate with the poor. He has spoken on the collapsing public healthcare, economic stagnation, and "rampant government corruption”.
Outside his polling station on Sunday morning, Magyar framed the election in civilisational terms: "This is a choice between East or West, propaganda or honest public discourse, corruption or clean public life."
Orban, after casting his own ballot at a nearby booth on Sunday morning, appeared defiant: "I'm here to win.” By the night, counting of about half showed the centre-right, pro-EU Tisza party of Peter Magyar winning 135 seats — a crucial two-thirds majority — in the 199-member parliament, ahead of Orban's Fidesz party.
"The situation is understandable," Orban said at a Fidesz campaign office in Budapest, "The election result is painful for us, but clear."
Trump-Vance campaign for Orban
The Trump administration had done everything short of casting a ballot itself to prevent a Magyar victory.
Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest on April 7 for what was billed as a ‘Day of Hungarian-American Friendship’.
Essentially, a campaign rally.
Standing before thousands of Orban supporters, Vance asked the crowd, "Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth and for the God of our fathers? Then my friends, go to the polls on the weekend; stand with Viktor Orban."
Vance also held his phone to the microphone so Trump could address the crowd directly. After some struggles and voicemail reroutes, Trump came on the line and said, "I'm a big fan of Viktor. I'm with him all the way. The United States is with him all the way.”
What binds Trump and Orban
On his Truth Social account last week, Trump wrote that his administration stood ready to use "the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary's Economy" if Orban won.
"We are excited to invest in the future prosperity that will be generated by Orban's continued Leadership!" he said, and made another post, saying, "Hungary: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBÁN. He is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement."
The ideological bond between the two men runs deep.
Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist who has known Orban since the 1990s and chairs the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, explained the logic.
"This American administration believes that there is a Trumpian revolution, and that this Trumpian revolution is coming to Europe, and that Europe is just one electoral cycle behind the United States," Krastev told CNN.
He said the Trump administration viewed Orban and his ideological infrastructure as central to a push for a Europe that’s “anti-woke, anti-green, anti-immigrant”.
Binding Trump and Orban together, perhaps more than any other single factor, has been their shared admiration for Russia's authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin.
This affinity persisted even as Russian forces have continued their war in Ukraine. Trump famously called Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 "genius" and “savvy”. Orban made no secret of his own relationship with Moscow. He reportedly told Putin in a phone call, "I can help in any way. There's a story in our Hungarian picture books where a mouse helps a lion. I am ready to help immediately."
Orban even blocked the EU's 90-billion-euro loan to Ukraine and vetoed key decisions that would have aided Kyiv's defence.
Both Trump and Orban consistently framed Russia not as an aggressor, but as a power to be accommodated.
‘Trumpian revolution’ fading at home
But even as the Trump administration was spending its diplomatic capital in Hungary, the US President's standing at home was deteriorating in ways that would have been unimaginable a year ago, when he started his non-consecutive second term.
The Iran war launched on February 28 under ‘Operation Epic Fury’ has cracked open fissures in the MAGA coalition.
Talks held in Pakistan over the weekend hit a wall, though for now there is a temporary truce till April 21.
Some of Trump's most loyal voices — commentator Tucker Carlson, far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich, former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — have publicly rebuked Trump over the war, and sometimes even his whole approach to governance.
There are voices against his support for Israel, in particular. His top intelligence aide Joe Kent quit last month saying Israel “blackmailed” Trump into the Iran war.
Carlson has taken a Christian conservative angle to even Trump’s criticism, thus using MAGA terms to slam him. "We've intentionally bombed civilian infrastructure. That's totally unacceptable. Not under the phony laws of some international body, but under moral law, God's law," he said. Trump and his war secretary Pete Hegseth have pointedly used religious references in the war against the Shia Muslim country of Iran.
In his elections, Trump had won significant support because he had campaigned against foreign entanglements. His old social media posts hold proof of this.
More recently, though, Trump made a long post on Truth Social, calling his critics "stupid people" with "low IQs”. He also claimed that a poll showed 99% of MAGA supports his war; but did not share details.
Surveys do tell a story, much more different than he has been claiming.
Trump's approval among independent voters has fallen to just 28%, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll. This group was central to his 2024 victory and will be decisive in November's midterm elections, CNN has reported. A Morning Consult survey found his approval rating to be positive in just 17 of 50 states, down from 22 states earlier in the year.
In Hungary, voters were alreadt set to reject the political model Trump has long championed. A retiree named Eszter Szatmari, 62, told news agency Bloomberg at a voting booth that this election was "basically our last chance to see anything vaguely resembling democracy in Hungary”.
