This is the April 14, 2026, edition of “The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe” newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Not saying Trump is the Antichrist. But he’s radiating the spirit of Antichrist, no question.”

— Rod Dreher, Christian author and Trump supporter on the president depicting himself as Jesus 

CHART OF THE DAY

ON THIS DATE

On April 14, 1865, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., then leaped from the box onto the stage and fled. Lincoln died the next morning, becoming the first American president to be assassinated.

His last words, spoken just minutes before Booth entered his box, were a response to his wife, Mary Lincoln, who had nestled close and asked what their guest, Miss Clara Harris, would think of her hanging on to him: “She won’t think anything about it.”

A CONVERSATION WITH ANNE APPLEBAUM

Hungary’s opposition dealt a stunning blow to authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán this weekend, ending his 16-year grip on power in a landslide. Anne Applebaum — author of “Twilight of Democracy” and a new piece in The Atlantic titled “Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable” — joined “Morning Joe” to discuss why this moment may be a turning point for democracy worldwide. 

JS: Anne, walk us through this extraordinary result in Hungary — and why it matters far beyond Budapest. 

AA: Orbán spent 16 years going right up to the edge of legality to control everything he could — the bureaucracy, the judiciary, 90% of the media, a huge network of party propaganda funded by Hungarian state money. And yet the fact that he’d driven Hungary to the bottom of the European Union in economic statistics finally meant there was a really significant vote against him — a constitutional majority so large that even Orbán, who had made noises about contesting the result, had to concede. 

Hungary was the country doing Russia’s bidding, blocking EU efforts to help Ukraine and sanction Russia — and it was a model for illiberal leaders all around the world. This election shows there is nothing inevitable about authoritarianism.

JS: How did Orbán’s opponent, Péter Magyar, pull this off? 

AA: Magyar had no access to media, no access to billboard space — all of that was controlled by the government — and he won anyway. He stayed focused on a really broad grassroots campaign, going round and round the country, to towns and villages multiple times, doing six or seven public meetings a day in the final weeks. It’s a triumph for Hungarian organization and determination. 

JS: How deep did Orbán’s ties to Vladimir Putin actually go? 

AA: We have leaked tapes — audio and transcripts — of conversations between Orbán’s foreign minister and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, offering to send him EU documents, telling him how he’s blocking Ukraine. And we have a very ugly conversation between Orbán and Putin himself, where Orbán describes himself as a mouse to Putin’s lion. 

This is somebody who claims to be a nationalist, who claimed to care about Hungarian sovereignty and culture — and yet it turns out he was in hock to one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, acting on their behalf in Europe.

JS: The Wall Street Journal editorial page is demanding apologies from everyone who warned about Orbán — arguing he was never really a threat. I called that “a cynical, bad-faith effort.” What does the record actually show? 

AA: Orbán was not a conservative. By the end of his career he was a radical — using state power to impose his version of culture and to favor his friends economically. They turned Péter Magyar’s girlfriend into a spy for them. They bugged his phone. They hacked the opposition’s data and leaked it online, with the implication that people should go after opposition members. It was a very ugly, very aggressive government — and it had nothing to do with conservatism in the old American sense at all.

JS: You wrote “Twilight of Democracy” in 2020, warning that the center-right was radicalizing and democracy was under threat. How does Hungary’s election fit into the larger story you’ve been telling?

AA: Much of what Donald Trump and JD Vance have tried to do in this second term is exactly what Orbán tried to do — to use their legitimate mandate as democratically elected leaders to change the political system, to create a one-party state so that they never lose. Being elected doesn’t mean you have the power to break the law, to defy court orders, to transform the bureaucracy, or to take away merit-based positions and give them to party loyalists. Hungarians came to understand that. Poles came to understand it. I think Americans are beginning to understand it, too.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for brevity and clarity.

One Day, Two Scandals, Nine Resignations

The House has expelled only a handful of its own members in its entire history. This week, it was bracing to add several more — until two of them saved everyone the trouble.

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales — each facing sexual misconduct allegations — announced yesterday, within hours of each other, that they are leaving Congress. 

MS NOW has reviewed text messages and medical records corroborating assault allegations against Swalwell, who had also dropped out of the California governor’s race just 24 hours earlier. Gonzales has acknowledged an affair with a staffer who later died by suicide, and has stayed silent on a second staffer’s claims that he pressured her for nude photos.

Their exits bring the current Congress’ total departures to nine — staggering for a body that rarely sees midterm walkouts. One analyst has called it one of the “most woeful Congresses in recent memory.” Monday was not a good day to dispute that.

EXTRA HOT TEA

$1 million

— The average net worth of the American household, per Federal Reserve data. Roughly 1 in 6 American families’ net worth is over the seven-figure threshold — but many say they don’t feel rich.

ONE MORE SHOT

Fatou, a western lowland gorilla and a fixture of Zoo Berlin since long before the Wall went up — and came down — turned 69 on Monday. Born in the wild in West Africa and brought to Berlin when Dwight D. Eisenhower was still in the White House, she is believed to be the oldest living gorilla in the world. She celebrated, as one does, with a basket of vegetables.

CATCH UP ON MORNING JOE

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From MS Now.