Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s crushing defeat on Sunday in his country’s parliamentary elections should serve as a warning here at home for Donald Trump and the Republicans ahead of the midterms, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told MS NOW.

“This is a significant development,” Clinton said of the results during a phone interview on Monday with “Morning Joe.” “It is a win for the Hungarian people. It’s a win for Europe. It’s a win for democracy.”

Orbán, a Trump ally who served as prime minister for 16 years, conceded to Peter Magyar, whose center-right Tisza Party will now control a supermajority of seats in the country’s parliament. 

His loss came days after Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to campaign for the populist leader, who was also endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Clinton called the coalition of these leaders behind Orbán an “unholy alliance among autocrats and wannabe autocrats,” and said the loss was a “significant defeat for Putin, for Trump and for the forces of authoritarianism around the world.”

The former Democratic presidential nominee told MS NOW that during his visit, Vance “kept going on and on about how we had to save Western civilization,” but in her view, “voting Orbán out is a win for Western civilization.”

“He was dominating the government, but he was also dominating the judiciary,” she explained. “He was in every way possible, strangling a free press. He was taking over the universities and telling them what to teach.”

“Some of that may sound very familiar to your viewers,” Clinton said, referencing the Trump administration, which has pushed for similar crackdowns on America’s institutions. 

“What we should be learning from this is that you cannot allow one man rule, because one man rule leads to corruption. It leads to oppression. It leads to reckless adventures like we’re seeing with Trump in Iran. It leads to the kind of destruction of democratic institutions,” she said. 

Clinton said Sunday’s results should be “a wake-up call for Americans,” and urged the U.S. to follow Hungary’s lead: “I don’t care what you call yourself politically; if you are an American, you care about American democracy. Here, in our 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we want to be independent of the kind of behavior that you see coming from Trump, which is an effort to model himself on Vladimir Putin.”

“Victor Orbán learned that the Hungarian people wouldn’t put up with that, and I certainly hope that we see that in the midterm elections and the next presidential election from American voters,” she said. 

You can watch Clinton’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.

The post Hillary Clinton: Orbán’s loss in Hungary is ‘wake-up call for Americans’ ahead of midterms appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.