Bad Energy

05/03/2026

The sight of Vice President J. D. Vance campaigning for authoritarian Viktor Orban in Hungary days before the national elections was not lost on European leaders. Hapless Vance whose charisma+political gifts roughly approximates that of Trump toady, sniveling Stephen Miller, seems to have cost the strongman a few percentage points in the final hours of the campaign. Our Man in Budapest was indirectly shilling for Putin of whom Orban was a great favorite+key ally. But after 16 years, Hungarians had had enough of former liberal turned tyrant Orban as he was swept to the dustbin of history.

Immediately, the new government of Prime Minister Peter Magyar, leader of the center-right party Tisza, the binding glue of a center-right coalition, supported a substantial European Union (EU) $106 billion loan package to Ukraine for industrial+defense spending. About $10 billion is earmarked for drone procurement. Orban had opposed providing important funding for Ukraine in their war against Putin’s Russia.

Orban swung far to the right in his successful 2010 campaign, under the political guidance of reclusive American consultant Arthur Finkelstein. The Hungarian Socialist Party (which largely endorsed Tisza candidates in the parliamentary elections to form a popular front against Orban) had seen a collapse of political support because of the global recession’s cascading economy. According to the BBC, Finkelstein, an advisor to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bibi Netanyahu, designed a messaging blitz that focused on George Soros as the source of Hungary’s economic+political crises. This year, Orban updated the message — now it was the leader of the Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky who was harming Hungary by demanding $$ from the EU to fight Putin.

The late Finkelstein always told his clients that “it’s good to have an enemy” — he told me that over a cup of coffee+a bagel 25 years ago as some free advice. Well, no problem on the enemy front — plenty to go around these days. And this is a tried+true recipe; Nixon, his long ago client, had an entire Enemies’ List! That shrewdly predatory leader of the Silent Majority (how did he hear them exactly?) directed the IRS, Trump-style, to audit those Democrats, business leaders, actors, peace activists+nuns and priests who had hurt the frail Nixonian ego. He heard you Arthur (RIP)!