1. Steve Bannon, a prominent voice of Trumpism, said that Viktor Orbán is “one of the moral leaders of the world”. For now, this figure whom Trump felt so close to that he said they were “like twins” is licking his wounds from a crushing defeat. Tisza, Péter Magyar's party, will have an absolute majority with 138 seats, compared to Fidesz, Orbán's party, with 55. It is precisely the unexpected dimension of the failure that has made these elections an event.
The result has left Orbán speechless. If it had been a close call, who knows what Trump's (and Putin's) man in Budapest would have done with the help of his international backers. Any destabilizing maneuver was possible before leaving power. But faced with the decisiveness of the ballot boxes, for now he has opted for silence. And it is the voters who have given dimension to the event. Not only because Hungarian citizens have shown their pro-Europeanism and their rejection of submission to the United States and Russia, but because, at the same time, what is already being noticed everywhere has been highlighted: the dramatic fall in Donald Trump's image. His support is unsettling, it weakens rather than strengthens. Vice President J.D. Vance even went to Budapest to ratify the American government's support for Orbán. If it served any purpose, it was to aggravate the wound.
2. Magyar's success —now we will see what he does with it and if he falls into the temptations that will soon come his way— is a failure for Putin and Trump that confirms the accelerated loss of recognition that the American president is suffering after the warmongering exhibitionism that, dragged along by Benjamin Netanyahu, he is carrying out in Iran. The Financial Times said last weekend that “Trump is ruining America's moral leadership. The president's chilling threats have further poisoned norms against war crimes.” And I add: the loss of support for the president in American society is becoming increasingly evident, with some of his MAGA colleagues expressing that they are fed up with him. Wars, today, except in very particular circumstances —the case of Israel is convoluted— do not favor adhesions. And even less so when war becomes the way of being in the world, and threat —from the excessive ego of someone short on self-esteem— the permanent strategy. Trump has the need to make war the main instrument of himself. Unfortunately, there are psychopathological conditions that find refuge in power, that is, at the expense of everyone. Such is the human condition.
Trump's exhibitionism. He has to make people believe that he always has the last word; it serves to camouflage reality. And he easily forgets that the unconditional promoter and defender of this war is Netanyahu, who lives off the conflict and Israel's military supremacy in the region and who exhibits a state of permanent aggressiveness. Trump has accepted that he occupies the forefront by supporting the Israeli leader, who only appears to set the pace if tensions decrease or if Trump backs down. In any case, the American president is running out of rope. Discrepancies are increasingly appearing on the American scene, leading him to raise the tone of a spectacle between warmongering delirium and permanent threat.
3. But Hungary's result also calls on Europe, which has once again played the role of the sad figure incapable of putting Trump in his place. Von der Leyen's congratulation – that of the sad spectacle of subservience to Trump on an American golf course – to Magyar, celebrating Orbán's defeat, seems like a joke. Now they wake up. In this entire crisis, there have been few warnings from Europe. In fact, it was Pedro Sánchez – these days in China, precisely (four times in four years) – who was the first to openly distance himself from Trump, which, in fact, has already had confirmation of receipt. Hungary's electoral result calls on Europeans: "Didn't you expect it? Well, here we are." Neither the USA nor Russia: Hungary has voted for Europe, which must rise to the occasion.
