Péter Magyar is Hungary’s new prime minister as his center-right Tisza party won a supermajority of parliament seats in Sunday’s elections. Losers in the race are authoritarian Viktor Orbán, PM since 2010, President Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Scroll this column for details. [PHOTO: Tisza]
• In the right column: Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay on Trump’s ‘Wins.’
• In the left column: Details on our next Talking With, Not At…
MONDAY 4/13/26
US Blockades Blockade – It appears the US Military blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as promised by President Trump has taken effect, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing a UK Maritime Trade Operations notice to mariners. Trump earlier said the US blockade of ships entering or exiting Iranian ports would take effect at 10 a.m. US Eastern Time Tuesday. [The UKMTO is affiliated with the British Royal Navy.]
“We, of course, support this firm stance and we are in constant coordination with the US," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised statement.
Spokesman for Iran Parliament’s National Security Commission Ebrahim Rezai responded to Trump’s threat that no port on the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Oman would be safe. Rezai called Trump’s threat “bluster” and said Iran would consider a US blockade an “act of war” to which it would respond, according to the WSJ.
“If they don’t come back,” Trump said of ceasefire talks with Iran, “I’m fine. Their military is gone, and their missiles are largely defeated.”
As a reminder, the US-Israeli war on Iran is in the middle of a two-week ceasefire Trump announced earlier last week ahead of peace talks between Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, White House son-in-law Jared Kushner and Iranian diplomats in Islamabad, Pakistan, last weekend.
The talks ended in futility Saturday after 21 hours of negotiations. Vance left Islamabad empty handed four days after he stumped for populist “defender” of “Western civilization” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s re-election.
“We have got to get Viktor Orbán reelected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?” Vance said.
Scroll down to read about how that turned out Sunday.
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AAA National Average Unleaded Regular, Monday: $4.125 per gallon, up $1.143 over February 26. Diesel: $5.652 per gallon, up $2.44 over February 27.
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Democracy Wins Hungary – There was speculation that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would pull a Donald J. Trump circa December 2020-January 2021 and refuse to concede Sunday’s Hungarian elections. But the preternaturally MAGA – er, MHGA -- anti-immigrant populist leader, in office since 2010, told a crowd of his supporters the following, The New York Times reports:
“The result of the election, while not complete, is clear. The result of the election is painful for us, but clear. Voters did not give us the responsibility and the ability to govern. I’ve congratulated the victorious party.”
Orbán ominously added; “We will never give up. Never, never, never.”
Voter turnout topped 80%, highest since Hungary’s 1989 election to separate from what was left of the Soviet Union, NPR’s Rob Schmitz told Morning Edition.
The Respect and Freedom party, or Tisza for short, won 137 seats in Hungary’s parliament to Fidesz’s 55. Hungary’s new prime minister, Tisza’s Péter Magyar, resigned Fidesz himself two years ago to run largely on a promise to end the corruption that has enriched Orbán while devastating Hungary’s economy to make it the poorest in the European Union, by far.
Tisza’s two-thirds majority gives Magyar “basically free reins to undertake sweeping constitutional changes,” Abel Bojar, of the Budapest-based 21 Research Center political polling firm, told NPR’s All Things Considered Sunday. “And what we’re hoping at this point is that he will use that to re-democratize the country.”
Orbán and his Fidesz party were not the only losers in this election. By close association include as the election’s losers the Trump White House and Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) and Putin’s Kremlin, for which Orbán blocked 90 billion euros in aid to Ukraine from the EU just prior to the war’s fourth anniversary in February (per Financial Times).
Orbán’s Fidesz playbook will look familiar: His “illiberal democracy” stacked Hungary’s judicial system and nominally independent agencies with Fidesz loyalists and took control of the country’s news media outlets.
“We have done it,” Magyar told a crowd of supporters at a rally on the Danube River (NYT). “We have liberated Hungary and have taken back our country.” – Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa