U.S. President Donald Trump is a great admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Indeed, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon described Orbán as “Trump before Trump.” Other MAGA personalities share Trump’s admiration for the Hungarian PM, including Vice-President JD Vance and media personality Tucker Carlson. The head of the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, claims: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

And what is this model? Since coming to power in 2010, Orbán has dismantled the country’s legal system, rigged the election system to ensure future election victories, distributed state resources to his cronies, shifted media control to oligarchs favourable to his party, and waged culture wars against gays and immigrants. It is the model of an aspiring autocrat with fascist tendencies.

Then we can look at the Trump regime. It has gutted the federal government, firing critics and promoting flunkies; rewarded billionaires; eroded academic freedom, judicial independence and the free press; purged equity, diversity, and inclusion programs; and ruthlessly harassed immigrants. It has aptly been referred to as the Orbánisation of America.

Orbán, who once defined himself as an “agnostic liberal,” now claims to champion Europe’s “Christian values.” Trump also showed little religious interest until he embarked on his presidential campaign when he became the favourite ally of Christian nationalism. Religion has its purposes.

Now Trump’s bizarre economic policies may have the U.S. following Hungary on yet another path.

After liberation from the collapsed Soviet Union, Hungary was consider one of Eastern Europe’s brightest hopes, widely perceived as the wealthiest country in Central Europe. But after years of Orbán’s leadership, and his often eccentric economics, referred to as Orbanomics, things look anything but bright. According to Eurostat (the European Union’s statistical office) Hungary is now the EU’s poorest country in terms of household welfare.

The Economic Times reports that ordinary Hungarians are facing low real wages, high inflation, brain drain and a hollowed-out middle class. Transparency International ranked Hungary as the EU’s most corrupt country in 2025. The MAGA hero has left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.

And I might point out that he’s admired by more than MAGA conservatives. One of our own, the éminence grise of the Conservative Party of Canada, Stephen Harper, has stated he wants closer ties between right-leaning political parties, including his own, and the Hungarian government. Harper chairs the International Democrat Union, a global alliance of conservative parties that includes Canada’s Conservatives as well as Orbán’s Fidesz party.

Poilievre is no Trump, but his style and his policies show more than a few similarities to those of the U.S. president. And to those of Orbán? I wonder if we didn’t just dodge a bullet in our recent election.