Democratic defenders can take pride and comfort in the landslide defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after 16 years of autocratic rule. With a record turnout, Péter Magyar led his Tisza Party to a victory Sunday so sweeping that Orbán was compelled to concede. With more than two-thirds of the 199-seat Parliament, Magyar’s party can rewrite the constitution and chart the course back to democracy. Orbán, long the darling of MAGA and who received a visit from Vice President JD Vance and the backing of Donald Trump, in the end may have demonstrated that anti-democratic bullies’ resilience is overrated.
Orbán’s defeat capped a week of failure for Vance and Trump, a sign of Trump’s own diminishing power that may end in a midterm defeat as humiliating as Orbán’s. Trump, despite his bluster, looks smaller and more isolated than ever.
As a full-fledged narcissist, Trump expects complete subservience — no matter how badly he treats others. He, therefore, must have been shocked when NATO countries did not rush to aid his disastrous war of choice against Iran. More recently, the White House was likely flabbergasted when its effort to strong-arm Pope Leo (!) triggered another Vatican tongue-lashing, which was leaked. Never in the post-World War II era have so many world leaders shown open contempt for a U.S. president.
What did he expect from NATO?
Bruised from criticism over his disastrous war and the loss of a critical international waterway, Trump pivoted to threatening to exit NATO. He is miffed that many European allies, who were caught by surprise by Trump’s illegal, ill-conceived war, spoke out against it. Although Germany, the UK, and France allowed the United States to use (at least partially) their airspace or bases, Spain did not. Trump’s demand that Europeans send minesweepers to the Strait of Hormuz was met with stone-cold silence. (NATO is obviously a defensive alliance; NATO invoked Article V after 9/11 because we were attacked. Member states had no obligation to join Trump’s harebrained war of aggression.)
Trump had no reason to anticipate unconditional support from European allies whom he never consulted, especially after he abandoned defense of Europe (i.e., sabotaging Ukraine’s defense), levied tariffs on them, smeared them for precipitating “civilizational decline” with lax immigration laws, threatened to invade Denmark’s territory of Greenland, and meddled (unsuccessfully) in German and Hungarian elections on behalf of fascists. Really, what did he expect? In his narcissistic brain, he no doubt assumed that bullying would deliver total obedience.
Although Trump rants about pulling out of NATO (which he cannot legally do, if that mattered to him), seasoned national security experts do not expect him to make good on his threat, although he may reduce troop numbers in certain countries. (Those troops benefit our defense, so Trump’s fervor for revenge again punishes the United States.)
As the New York Times reported: “In the president’s latest outburst, some analysts also see a familiar inclination to attack a weaker party, especially given Mr. Trump’s inability to compel Iran to surrender after five weeks of bombardment.”
Trump’s post-war temper tantrum only underscores how much clout Trump has lost and how badly he has degraded our most vital alliances. NATO hangs by a thread; our Gulf allies grumble that they now face, thanks to Trump, a more aggrieved Iran, which is bolstered by control of the Strait of Hormuz and which still possesses enriched uranium and missile capacity. Robert Kagan wrote that he sees this as a preview of our shrunken stature and influence: “Nations that once bandwagoned with the United States will now remain aloof or align against it—not because they want to, but because the United States leaves them no choice, because it will neither protect them nor refrain from exploiting them.”
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other aggressors know Trump has undermined U.S. power and alliances. They will design their expansionist schemes accordingly (be it China’s designs on Taiwan or Russia’s on Europe).
The pope has the last word
Like a scene from a bad mob movie, Pentagon officials in January reportedly leaned on the Vatican to get on board with Trump’s war. According to a news report, at an extraordinary meeting Pentagon officials told the representatives of the Holy See: “The United States has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.”
Christopher Hale, a Vatican expert, confirmed the report, explaining that Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby implicitly threatened Vatican Ambassador Cardinal Christophe Pierre by invoking “the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.” (Nice church you have, shame anything might happen to it.)
Vice President JD Vance, who once arrogantly lectured the Vatican — incorrectly — on theology, first claimed not to recognize Pierre’s name, but then promised to look into it. (It should make his tour for his new book, flaunting his Catholic bona fides, interesting.)
The Trump regime furiously denied the report; the Vatican played it down. Nevertheless, the pope on Friday left no doubt where the Vatican stands, writing on his X account:
Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people’s lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self-interest. ….
God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.
On Saturday, Pope Leo reiterated his condemnation of the “delusion of omnipotence.” He seemed to be admonishing Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth when he declared, “Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death.” (By Sunday night, Trump was accusing the pope of being soft on crime. No, really. Trump cannot resist displaying evidence of his unwell mind.)
The Pentagon stunt revealing narcissistic dreams of domination and thuggish arrogance toward the leader of over 1.4 billion Catholics reveals the depth of the Trump regime’s depravity and the unbridled hypocrisy of MAGA cult, which claim to champion religious freedom (as long as it’s their faith) against Godless liberals. It reveals Trump for what he truly is: a hateful man playing Mafia boss.
America alone
While Trump’s anti-NATO rhetoric emphasizes his destruction of our most valuable alliance, the Vatican episode displays the degree to which Trump (who threatens genocide), Hegseth (who glorifies death, gamifies war, and wages his own crusade), and the rest of the MAGA apparatchiks have sacrificed America’s moral standing at the altar of Trump deification.
Though more ephemeral than military or economic power, moral authority is an essential part of American strength that has sustained the United States as a resilient superpower. As former Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last year, we made a choice after WWII to adopt a vision of “enlightened self-interest, the notion that the success of others is actually to our benefit.” It worked insofar as America “got new markets for our products” and “found new partners to deal with challenges that we were not capable really effectively of dealing with alone.” With all the U.S.’s faults, this smart strategy gave us, as Blinken recalled, “80 extraordinary years of progress.”
Unfortunately, in casting aside enlightened self-interest in favor of survival of the meanest, Trump sacrifices the foundation of our superpower stature. As Kagan wrote, “No one will cooperate with the United States by choice, only by coercion. Without allies, the United States will have to depend on clients that it controls, such as Venezuela, or weaker powers that it can bully.”
In a dangerously unstable world, we will find out how America fares without voluntary alliances of mutual benefit and the power of moral suasion.
You do us all a huge favor by telling it like it is, Jen. It’s a long road ahead; buckle up.
Thank you for your clarity on how much we're losing, as Trump and regime destroy our alliances and our own people. Make America Grim Again.