MSNBC White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López and former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joel Rubin suggested that President Trump and the Republican Party might copy conservatives in Hungary in an attempt to destroy political opposition during their Friday appearance on Ana Cabrera Reports. This came in anticipation of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s visit at the White House scheduled for later that day.
Barrón-López believed Trump had a friendly relationship with Orbán because he “admires and respects” Orbán’s political actions, including:
… the playbook he's used to essentially take control of the judiciary in Hungary, to consolidate his power in a way that makes it easier for him to win reelection without really any challengers. And so, the Republicans have been pretty open about this in terms of looking at Hungary as a potential playbook. And when you talk to authoritarian experts, they will say that this is an element of autocratic capture, which is to try to consolidate power, and the President has looked at that.
Trump has already stated he won’t run for a third term due to a little thing called the Constitution. Kinda knocked the wind out of the “No Kings” sails.
The super fair former PBS reporter also mentioned how Orbán “ran on anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant rhetoric and repeated that when he came to CPAC a few years ago […] telling Republicans to play by their own rules. He said things like that. He also said that if you're a Christian politician, you can't be racist.”
The American right has slowly ceded under cultural pressure to include LBTQ membership. And Trump himself has never been critical of gay people and has several in his administration. That last point about how Christians weren’t allowed to be racist does track, so it’s confusing why López would cite that as evidence of Orbán influencing the American right.
When asked if there were similarities between Orbán’s nationalist leadership and that of the Trump administration, Rubin strangely used Tucker Carlson as an example:
Tucker Carlson went out to Hungary and made a big splash of an event, and now he's here as one of the leading voices mainstreaming anti-Semitism on the right in talking with Nick Fuentes, who is an avowed racist anti-Semite. And so, yeah, there are a lot of connections. There's certainly a lot of symmetry in terms of the policy arguments as well.
Rubin conveniently ignored the large-scale condemnation made by conservatives for Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes. Carlson has continued to distance himself from the current era of MAGA during Trump’s second term, even going so far as to defend NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Trump likes to troll liberals about a third term, but that doesn’t mean he can or will bring authoritarianism to America.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" read:
MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera Reports
November 7, 2025
11:33:00 a.m. EST
(…)
ANA CABRERA: So, while it's the first meeting between these two leaders since Trump was reelected, the two did meet in Mar-a-Lago during last year's campaign. Laura, talk to us more about their relationship. Why is it so friendly?
LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ: Well, it's friendly in part because President Trump, you know, he admires and respects what Orbán has done in Hungary. And what I'm talking about there is the kind of things that Orbán has run on, as well as the playbook he's used to essentially take control of the judiciary in Hungary, to consolidate his power in a way that makes it easier for him to win reelection without really any challengers. And so, the Republicans have been pretty open about this in terms of looking at Hungary as a potential playbook. And when you talk to authoritarian experts, they will say that this is an element of autocratic capture, which is to try to consolidate power, and the President has looked at that.
Orbán also ran on anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant rhetoric and repeated that when he came to CPAC a few years ago, that Conservative Political Action Conference, when he was talking to the right wing of the party here in America, and essentially saying — telling Republicans to play by their own rules. He said things like that. He also said that if you're a Christian politician, you can't be racist. And, so you see a lot of the strains of that in the Republican Party today in America.
CABRERA: Yeah, we see the MAGA world really, kind of, have an affinity for Viktor Orbán. Joel, do you see similarities between Orbán's nationalist leadership and White House policies?
JOEL RUBIN: Well, yeah. I mean, look, it's obvious even to this discussion. Tucker Carlson went out to Hungary and made a big splash of an event, and now he's here as one of the leading voices mainstreaming anti-Semitism on the right in talking with Nick Fuentes, who is an avowed racist anti-Semite. And so, yeah, there are a lot of connections. There's certainly a lot of symmetry in terms of the policy arguments as well.
And I think that's the underlying tone of these meetings, which is that Trump and Orbán, they have a lot in common. But what's fascinating about this moment is this rush — rupture over the Russia policy. And, again, I go back to this point that we're looking at this war that is not ending, that Russia continues to gain revenue, and shutting down their revenue stream through the oil exports they make to Hungary would be a big win for President Trump, but it's not clear he's gonna want to take that. And if he does that carve out, Vladimir Putin may again not take him seriously on his interest in seeing this war come to an end.
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