Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate

 

Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate

As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”

 

By Peter Baker

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent, is covering his sixth presidency and wrote a book about President Trump’s first term with Susan B. Glasser.

• April 13, 2026Updated 3:21 p.m. ET

President Trump’s erratic behavior and extreme comments in recent days and weeks have turbocharged the crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy debate that has followed him on the national political stage for a decade.

A series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements capped by his “a whole civilization will die tonight” threat to wipe Iran off the map last week and his head-spinning attack on the “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” pope on Sunday night have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power.

The White House rejected such assessments, saying that Mr. Trump is sharp and keeping his opponents on edge. But the president’s eruptions have raised questions about America’s leadership in a time of war. While the country has had presidents whose capacity came under question before, most recently the octogenarian Joseph R. Biden Jr. as he aged demonstrably before the public’s eyes, never in modern times has the stability of a president been so publicly and forensically debated — and with such profound consequences.

Democrats who have long challenged Mr. Trump’s psychological fitness have issued a fresh chorus of calls to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from power for disability. But it is not just a concern voiced by partisans on the left, late-night comics or mental health professionals making long-distance diagnoses. It can be heard now among retired generals, diplomats and foreign officials. And most strikingly, it can be heard now on the political right among onetime allies of the president.

Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who recently broke with Mr. Trump, advocated using the 25th Amendment, telling CNN that threatening to destroy Iran’s civilization was “not tough rhetoric, it’s insanity.” Candace Owens, the far-right podcaster, called him “a genocidal lunatic.” Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, said Mr. Trump “does babble and sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot.”

Some of the questions about Mr. Trump’s soundness come from people who once worked with him and have since become critics. Even before the civilization post, Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer in Mr. Trump’s first term, told the journalist Jim Acosta that the president is “a man who is clearly insane” and that his recent string of belligerent, middle-of-the-night social media posts “highlights the level of his insanity.” Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary for Mr. Trump, wrote online last week that “he’s clearly not well.”

Mr. Trump fired back in a long, angry social media post that did not exactly radiate calm stability. “They have one thing in common, Low IQs,” he wrote of Ms. Owens, Mr. Jones, Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson. “They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” He threw the crazy charge back at them. “They’re NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS, and will say anything necessary for some ‘free’ and cheap publicity.”

The dissent on the right has not extended to Congress, where Republican lawmakers remain publicly loyal to the president, nor has it reached the cabinet, which would have to approve any invocation of the 25th Amendment, rendering that idea moot. But it reflects growing unease among Americans who in recent surveys have increasingly questioned the fitness of Mr. Trump, already the oldest president ever inaugurated, as he approaches his 80th birthday.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll in February found that 61 percent of Americans think Mr. Trump has become more erratic with age and just 45 percent say he is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” down from 54 percent in 2023. Roughly half of Americans, 49 percent, deemed Mr. Trump too old to be president when asked in a YouGov poll in September, up from 34 percent in February 2024, while just 39 percent said he was not too old.

Democrats have pressed the point in recent days. Mr. Trump is “an extremely sick person” (Senator Chuck Schumer of New York), “unhinged” and “out of control” (Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York) or, more bluntly, “batshit crazy” (Representative Ted Lieu of California). Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, wrote the White House physician requesting an evaluation, noting “signs consistent with dementia and cognitive decline” and “increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening” tantrums.

The president’s defenders pushed back. What critics call psychosis, they call strategy.

“Trump knows exactly what he is doing,” wrote Liz Peek, a columnist for the Hill and Fox News contributor. “Trump will continue to use maximalist (and sometimes outrageous) military and diplomatic pressure in his campaign to rid the Middle East of Iran’s near 50-year campaign of terror.”

Mr. Trump, who in his first term described himself as “a very stable genius” and has regularly boasted of passing cognitive tests meant to detect dementia, dismissed the criticism of his mental state when asked by a reporter last week.

“I haven’t heard that,” he said. “But if that’s the case, you’re going to have to have more people like me because our country was being ripped off on trade, on everything, for many years until I came along. So if that’s the case, you’re going to have to have more people.”

Asked for elaboration, Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said in an email: “President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the past four years.” He argued that Mr. Biden had declined physically and mentally in that time and that The New York Times and other media had covered it up. (The Times covered Mr. Biden’s health and age extensively in multiple stories.)

Mr. Trump’s stability has been a recurring issue since he first sought the presidency in 2016. Numerous psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have weighed in with their own opinions even without the opportunity to evaluate him. John F. Kelly, his longest serving White House chief of staff in the first term, even bought a book by 27 of those specialists called “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” in an effort to understand his boss and came to the conclusion that he was mentally ill.

 

This is not the first time a president’s mental fitness has been called into doubt. John Adams, Andrew Jackson and both Roosevelts were from time to time accused of being unbalanced by political foes.

Abraham Lincoln struggled with depression. Woodrow Wilson was never the same after a stroke. Lyndon B. Johnson veered between manic energy and bouts of gloominess. Ronald Reagan seemed to slip late in his presidency, and many wondered whether the Alzheimer’s disease announced years later might have already begun affecting him.

Some Trump admirers have compared him to Richard M. Nixon, who espoused what he reportedly called “the madman theory,” instructing Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser leading Vietnam peace talks, to tell negotiators that the president was unstable and unpredictable as a bargaining tool to secure a better agreement. But privately some of Nixon’s own advisers did not think it was all an act.

Mr. Trump has at times tried to leverage his madman reputation. “Make them think I’m crazy,” he told Nikki Haley, his first-term ambassador to the United Nations, referring to the North Koreans. “Do you know what the secret is of a really good tweet?” he once asked William P. Barr, then his attorney general. “Just the right amount of crazy.”

Yet Mr. Trump told The New York Post last week that this time, at least, he was not pretending. “I was willing to do it,” he said of his threat to destroy Iran’s civilization.

 

The public focus on Mr. Trump’s state of mind, goes further than with almost any past president. “Other than Nixon, there has never been this level of concern over time,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton historian and editor of a book on Mr. Trump’s first term.

Indeed, the situation today eclipses even Nixon. Unlike in the 1970s, “so much of this is playing out in public,” especially with social media and cable television, Mr. Zelizer said. And, he added, “as a president who naturally disregards any guardrails or sense of decorum, Trump feels much freer, even than Nixon, to unleash his inner rage and to act on impulse.”

In his second term, Mr. Trump seems even less restrained and more incoherent at times. He uses more profanity, speaks longer and regularly makes comments rooted in fantasy rather than fact. He keeps saying that his father was born in Germany when in fact he was born in the Bronx. He repeats an invented story about his uncle, an M.I.T. professor, telling him about teaching the terrorist known as the Unabomber.

He wanders off into odd tangents — an eight-minute ramble at a Christmas reception about poisonous snakes in Peru, a long digression during a cabinet meeting about Sharpie pens, an interruption of an Iran war update to praise the White House drapes. He has confused Greenland with Iceland and more than once boasted of ending a fictional war between Cambodia and Azerbaijan, two countries separated by nearly 4,000 miles. (He evidently means Armenia and Azerbaijan).

Even before lashing out at Pope Leo XIV on Sunday night, and then posting an image of himself as a Jesus-like figure before deleting it, Mr. Trump had shocked many with his outbursts at critics. He accuses those who anger him of sedition, a crime punishable by death. He claimed bizarrely that the Hollywood director Rob Reiner, who was allegedly stabbed to death by his son, was killed “due to the anger he caused” by opposing Mr. Trump. When Robert S. Mueller III, the former F.B.I. director and special counsel, died, Mr. Trump said, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”

In recent days, he declared that “Iran’s New Regime President” was “much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors.” Except that Iran’s new president is the same as the old president. There has been no change in presidents. Mr. Trump may have meant the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, but he is considered even more hard-line than his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the war.

One difference from the first term is that there are few if any advisers like Mr. Kelly who consider it their responsibility to keep Mr. Trump from going too far. “When he does what he does, everyone around him keeps their eyes to the floor and says nothing,” Mr. Zelizer said. “Unlike the first term, they don’t even seem to maneuver behind the scenes to stop him.”

But there may be political latitude for it with his base. “There is an element of American politics in the age of polarization, particularly within the G.O.P., that likes this style of leadership,” Mr. Zelizer said. “What can be more anti-establishment than someone who is willing to be out of control?”

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He is covering his sixth presidency and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework.

HEATHER

 

April 12, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson Apr 13 By the end of 2024, inflation in the U.S., which had soared in the aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdowns, was almost back to the Federal Reserve’s goal of 2%. Even so, during the 2024 presidential campaign, candidate Donald Trump promised he would bring prices down on Day One, beginning with energy prices, thanks to new high tariffs, business deregulation, and tax cuts. It was a year ago today, just ten days after President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, that Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro told the Fox News Channel that “90 [trade] deals in 90 days is possible. The boss is going to be the chief negotiator. Nothing’s done without him looking very carefully at it—he has such a fine attention to detail.” Trump’s “Liberation Day” tore up the free trade principles on which leaders after World War II based the international order that promoted stability and prosperity. In their place, Trump first declared an emergency to take the power to manage tariffs away from Congress, then used that power to elicit favorable treatment for his own businesses or bribes from those who needed the tariffs on their products lowered. The Supreme Court declared those tariffs unconstitutional on February 20, and later that day Trump claimed the right to impose tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes tariffs to address “large and serious balance-of-payments deficits.” Trump was the first to use this law, and his use of it has already been challenged. In the meantime, the administration has not begun the process of refunding the approximately $175 billion owed to the importers who paid the illegal tariffs, but says it will begin that process on April 20. Democrats have introduced bills to refund the costs of the tariffs passed on to consumers. The money from illegal tariffs is accumulating about $23 million a day in interest, to be paid for by taxpayers. In mid-March, Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell noted that inflation was rising. He explained that “some big chunk of that, between a half and three-quarters ​is actually tariffs, so we’re looking for progress on that” once Trump’s tariffs move through the system. Statistics released by the Labor Department on Friday showed that Trump’s war with Iran has pushed inflation to 3.3%. That’s the fastest rate of growth in almost two years, tripling the 0.3% rate in February, when inflation was 2.4%. Gasoline prices rose 21.2%, a record. Economist Heather Long told Alicia Wallace of CNN: “It’s going to get a lot worse before there’s any relief. Even if the war on Iran ends in two weeks, and there’s magically an agreement, inflation will continue to rise for months to come.” She continued: “We haven’t seen it come through with food yet, in airfares—those are clearly going to go higher—and in transit costs. It’s just a matter of time.” She added: “We almost forget the tariffs, because we’re all paying attention to the gas, but it’s a good reminder that part of the issue here is we’re piling on top of what was already rising.” Those energy costs are going to continue to skyrocket until the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil is transported, reopens for traffic. After strikes from both the U.S. and Israel costing the lives of 13 U.S. service members and countless Iranian and Lebanese civilians, and more than $1 billion a day, Iran has closed the strait for all but a few vessels from favored nations. In negotiating to reopen the strait, the U.S. is demanding terms that are significantly weaker than the ones Iran agreed to in 2015 during negotiation with the Barack Obama administration. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, together with Germany and the European Union—took 20 months to hash out. The agreement constrained Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for a relaxation of sanctions that would let Iran recover about $100 billion of assets frozen in overseas banks. Yesterday Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff were in Islamabad, Pakistan, to negotiate with Iran. According to Vance, their goal was to get Iran to stop its quest for a nuclear weapon, although both Kushner and Witkoff have deep financial ties to the Middle East and have been openly courting investments there during negotiations. And yet these leaders of the U.S. delegation, who have no experience in diplomacy, announced after only 21 hours that they could not reach an agreement and were leaving. At just about the same moment Vance, Kushner, and Witkoff left the negotiations, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were watching an Ultimate Fighting Championship match in Miami. Earlier, Trump had said to reporters that he didn’t care if the team in Islamabad reached an agreement. “We win, regardless,” he said. “We’ve defeated them militarily.” The fact that the president had the U.S. secretary of state with him at a UFC event while talks were breaking down in Islamabad showed Trump’s disdain for the State Department, as well as his attempt to play Vance and Rubio off against each other as each vies for Trump’s endorsement as the inheritor of MAGA. Today Trump announced that the U.S. military will blockade the Strait of Hormuz, sending the price of oil surging. It is unclear what the president hopes to accomplish by blockading the strait. He told Maria Bartiromo of the Fox News Channel his new policy is “called ‘all in and all out.’ There’ll be a time when we’ll have ’em all come in, and all come out, but it won’t be a percentage. It won’t be a friend of yours, like, a country that’s your ally or a country that’s your friend; it’s all or nothing. And that’ll be, uh, that won’t be in too long a distance. No, we’re, uh, just bringing the ships up. We got a lot of ships, so we’re bringing them up. We think that numerous countries are gonna be helping us with this also, but we’re putting on a complete blockade. We’re not gonna let Iran make money on selling oil to people that they like and not people that they don’t like, or whatever it is. It’s gonna be all or none, and that’s the way it is, and it’ll be, you saw what we did with Venezuela. It’ll be something very similar to that, but at a higher level.” U.S. Central Command, overseeing the U.S. military operation in Iran, announced today that it would “begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13…in accordance with the President’s proclamation.” Trump’s promise to voters that he would lower prices, along with his crusade against immigrants, attacks on education and the courts, and vow to resurrect a patriarchy in which white Christian men would dominate women and people of color, was closely patterned on the “illiberal democracy” of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. MAGA Republicans embraced Orbán as the leader of a movement to replace democracy with an authoritarianism that empowered the far right. MAGA Republicans invited Orbán to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and media figure Tucker Carlson interviewed him in Hungary. His destruction of democracy in Hungary provided the blueprint for Project 2025, with Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts building close ties to Orbán’s institutions. But Orbán’s vows to reinstate traditional values in Hungary produced higher prices and profound corruption. His corruption as well as his evident attempts to make Hungary subordinate to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin infuriated Hungarians, whose hatred for Russia runs deep, especially after that affinity was recently revealed to be actual promises to be “at your service” “in any matter where I can be of assistance.” Although Orbán’s political party has skewed governance in Hungary to make it hard for him to lose at the polls, as well as censoring the media, Hungarians turned out today in record numbers—77% of registered voters—and gave Orbán’s opposition party more than two thirds of the seats in the parliament, a supermajority that will let the opposition undo some of the changes Orbán’s party made to cement their power. Orbán’s defeat means that the parliament will name opposition leader Péter Magyar, a former Orbán loyalist, as prime minister. “We have done it,” Magyar told a crowd after Orbán conceded. “We have liberated Hungary and have taken back our country.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted on social media: “Hungary has chosen Europe. Europe has always chosen Hungary. A country reclaims its European path. The Union grows stronger.” Along with other right-wing leaders, both Trump and Vance had worked for Orbán’s victory in the election, with Vance actually traveling to Hungary to urge voters to turn out for Orbán’s party. Orbán’s defeat is a major blow to the MAGA belief that the right-wing forces opposing liberal democracy are the vanguard of an unstoppable movement blessed by God. Trump responded to Orbán’s defeat with a long screed attacking Pope Leo XIV, who has spoken out against the religious justification for wars, a statement widely interpreted as commentary on the Trump administration’s claim that the war in Iran is a holy war. “God does not bless any conflict,” the Pope posted on Friday. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” Trump tonight posted on social media, in part: “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.” Trump suggested the Pope was elevated to the papacy only “because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” He wrote “Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” Today is Orthodox Easter, and about 45 minutes after attacking the Pope, Trump posted an image of himself in the place of Jesus, apparently healing a sick man in a bed, surrounded by a soldier, a nurse, a woman praying, and an older man. Behind him are the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, and a giant American flag, while in the sky are two eagles, three fighter jets, soldiers, and what seems to be a monster. Amid popular revulsion at what people are calling heresy and blasphemy, former U.S. representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: “It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.” A minute after posting the image of himself as Jesus, Trump posted an image of a Trump tower on the moon.

 

Why Celebrate JD Vance's Worst Week Ever?

Deep personal loathing helps, but it is not enough.

David Rothkopf Apr 13

There is no doubt that J.D. Vance is one of the smuggest, smarmiest, politicians in modern American history. And that is saying a great deal given that politics attracts the smug and smarmy like moths to a flame. It is saying even more when you acknowledge that we live in a true golden age of smugsmarm, lit by that flame to the unctious, insincere, condescending and insufferable, Donald J. Trump.

Consider how many prime examples of smugsmarm we have to choose from. Matt Gaetz. Scott Bessent. Karoline Leavitt. Mike Johnson. Greg Abbott. Ron DeSantis. Pete Hegseth. Matt Gaetz. The Huckabee Family. Vivek Ramaswamy. Most Fox News hosts. Many Fox News guests. Pam Bondi. Kristi Noem. Melania. Jared. Ivanka. Don, Jr. Eric.

But among all these there is something about JD that is especially odious. It could be that he condescends to everyone. It could be that he has made a career of transparent insincerity. It could be that he is a protege of evil oligarch Peter Thiel. It could be his beard. It could be the feeling he communicates every time he opens his mouth. It could be the most punchable nose in the long history of punchable noses.

All of which are good reasons to celebrate the fact that in the short but incredibly undistinguished political career of this shapeshifting tool of GOP puppet masters, this past week is certainly the worst he has ever had. That is, of course, setting the bar pretty low since he did virtually nothing as a senator except switch positions on critical issues (like what he thought about Donald Trump) and he has done even less as Vice President except to ensure that people think twice about letting anything happen to Donald Trump.

Prior to this past week, JD’s greatest hits as VP were seeking to embrace Charlie Kirk’s widow a little too hard, embracing white supremacist Christian nationalism (also too hard…way too hard), turning off all of Europe with a super irritating lecture at the Munich Security Conference, and doing everything he could to position himself to succeed Donald Trump in 2028 (if not sooner).

Which is to say, he has not done much.

But this week, Donald Trump gave JD the two most important assignments of his time in office. First, he was dispatched to Hungary to support the man at the head of the MAGA-Putin ticket for re-election as the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. Then, he was sent off to lead the U.S. negotiating team seeking an end to the Iran War.

For Trump and the GOP, these were both vitally important assignments.

In the case of Orban, there is no world leader other than Putin to which the U.S. president and the U.S. Republican party has attached itself to more closely than Orban, who has already served 16 years as the head of Hungary’s government. Orban was invited to CPAC conferences, to Mar-a-Lago, hailed by Trump as a political soulmate and offered up as an example of the anti-democratic ethno-nationalist ideal emulate by MAGAworld. On a regular basis, he not only supported Trump but he advanced the Putin-Trump agenda with efforts to weaken and obstruct the EU and NATO and, in particular, to undermine European-US efforts to support Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression.

What is more, under Orban, Budapest became a hub of promoting a global right wing ethno-nationalist movement that extended far beyond Washington and Moscow and has included Netanyahu in Israel, Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina, LePen in France, Vucic in Serbia and right wing parties across Europe and beyond. Furthermore, as such it also became conduit for Russian money into those parties.

That is why it was so important to Trump that Orban win. That is why Trump sent the second highest ranking elected official in the U.S. That is why Vance stumped for Orban (while, in a truly hypocritical and therefore completely in-character display, condemning European efforts to endorse or support Orban’s opponent, Peter Magyar).

Things were not looking good during Vance’s visit as counter-demonstrations to were organized. They were looking worse when after his visit polls showed that Orban’s support actually dropped as a result of the public display of support from Vance—in one case by as many as 3 points.

But they looked worst of all late Sunday when, in the wake of an historic turnout among Hungarian voters and despite the many measures Orban had introduced to give himself an unfair electoral advantage, the Trump-Vance candidate was absolutely crushed in the Hungarian parliamentary elections.

This was bad news for Vance in multiple respects. First, he was a flop on the campaign trail. Next, a key source of support for the GOP is gone. In addition, a roadmap for how to beat authoritarians with turnout and active calls for accountability was offered up that could be relevant in the U.S. Third, with Vance’s approval ratings already among the lowest ever recorded for a vice president at this stage of an administration (with some showing a net negative rating of minus 25 percent and almost two-thirds of all voters viewing him unfavorable), Vance’s already murky future in American politics now looks even bleaker.

Indeed, with global politics sometimes moving in waves, the possibility that the Orban loss could trigger other big setbacks for the anti-democratic racist coalitions worldwide seemed to grow. Netanyahu will face an election later this year and with the Israeli populace already tiring of him and also, as it turns out, with his Iran war, he too appears in jeopardy. Closer to home, so too does the GOP in the U.S. midterm elections in November—especially if the GOP remains closely associated with its unpopular leaders and their hugely unpopular policies. (A new CBS News poll shows support for Trump-Vance policies in the toilet with fewer than a third of those polled supporting their handling of inflation, 35 percent support for their handling of the economy, 36 percent support for their debacle in Iran and only 41 percent support for their management of immigration issues.)

When it comes to his biggest substantive role yet in diplomatic matters, Vance’s trip to Pakistan to lead the U.S. delegation in negotiations with Iran was also a complete fail. Only five Americans, none experts in the issues in play, showed up to negotiate with 60 Iranians. Vance was not really empowered to negotiate, only to offer Trumpian ultimatums. Those did not go over well with the Iranians who feel as though the longer this war goes on, the more leverage they gain.

After less than a day of talks, Vance and company declared defeat and headed home. They achieved nothing. The hugely costly, unpopular, illegal Trump-Netanyahu war against Iran was not only no closer to a solution but within hours Trump announced a blockade of Iran that was certain to exacerbate the global energy crisis, unsettle markets and lead to further conflict.

Given two meaningful jobs, Vance failed at both.

Given how unpleasant Vance is, you may feel a bit of schadenfreude welling up. Couldn’t happen to a bigger creep, you might be thinking.

And you would be forgiven if that was your first impulse.

But, Vance’s humongous double-failure is not something to celebrate merely because it takes the arrogant prick down a notch or two.

No, there are bigger reasons to celebrate it.

Because the Orban defeat really is a blow to Trump and the GOP’s hard right. Not just because Orban was their rockstar or because it was overall, a good day for democracy, for Europe, for Ukraine, and for American interests. It was also a blow because if investigations now take place into the Orban’s corruption it is almost certain that ties to the Kremlin and dirty Russian money and to American political leaders and groups will be further exposed. Trump can control the DoJ. But the more investigations that take place worldwide that can reveal the extent of his corruption or his ties to Epstein or other such matters of high sleaze, the worse an already bad 2026 is going to be for Trump and Vance.

And all those are very good things.

So too, are the lessons of the Hungarian victory that may be applied here in the U.S. One, the way to beat autocrats who are inclined to cheat is to maximize turnout. Make the margin of victory too big for anyone to cry foul. Two, make demanding accountability a centerpiece of the campaign as Magyar has (and did again in his victory remarks). Voters are disgusted with corruption and abuses of power and want to make sure that leaders don’t skate off with their ill-gotten gains or having damaged their countries but never have been penalized for it.

But to my way of thinking, there is something even more important to be derived from Hungarian campaign. While Magyar was a center-right candidate he was also clearly pro-democracy, pro-EU and pro-NATO. Clear stances on matters of principle matter. But also, right vs. left old school political debates are pretty meaningless in this day and age. Orban’s message, like Trump and Vance and MAGA’s, is one that celebrates returning to the past. Magyar’s message was about the future, about making Hungary work for Hungarians in the context of the world that lies ahead.

If Americans who oppose Trump and Vance take away one thing from this, I hope it is a commitment to reject old arguments about where candidates or voters fall on “the political spectrum” and to focus instead on the key dividing line issue in our politics today, that of the differences between those who seek to turn back the clock and those who want to chart a new course for a stronger, more prosperous, more peaceful American future.

Clearly, such a future is one in which we finally put asinine, costly, indecent wars like the one currently being fought in Iran behind us…as well as rejecting the old ideas guiding Trump foreign policy (like imperialism or out-of-control American exceptionalism or corporatist, oligarch-driven hypercapitalism). Wars like that with Iran are impediments to our achieving our best future and, as it happens, suit the goals and objectives of our potential rivals in the new geopolitical reality we are entering…notably the Chinese.

The Iran War is Trump distracting from his decades old scandal with Epstein by acting on his still festering anger that a Black man became president and actually achieved some good in the world (like the original nuclear deal with Iran…which Trump tore up…and the terms of which we will be lucky to recreate). In so doing, he is emulating the foreign policy of neocons he once condemned and neo-imperialists from the late 19th Century. He is squandering what we should be investing in our people and in R&D and infrastructure and education in order to better compete in the rapidly changing global economic environment and thereby he is not only causing death and destruction today but he is doing damage whose toll will grow for many years to come.

In other words, there are many reasons to savor Vance’s struggles but the most important among them is that they could very well help restore the focus of the American people on the issues that really matter and, above all, on the paramount importance of looking forward rather than trying to cling to a past we would do well to put behind us.

 

“The world turned upside down.”

April 13, 2026

Robert B. Hubbell Apr 13

Let’s start with good news that portends well for the future of democracy in America: Viktor Orbán suffered a crushing electoral defeat after a sixteen-year reign that mimicked Trump’s autocratic tactics in the US. The Hungarian people were fed up with Orban’s aspiring dictator act and repudiated him at the ballot box in an incontestable victory for the opposition party, led by Péter Magyar. See The Guardian, Hungarian opposition ousts Viktor Orbán after 16 years in power | Hungary.

Orbán conceded quickly after early returns showed that he was headed for a historic defeat. That is the same scenario we experienced on November 4, 2025—the first “Election Day” after Trump’s 2024 win. Up to and including November 4, 2025, Trump was making statements suggesting that the November elections might be “rigged” and raising questions about whether he would accept the results. See, e.g., Democracy Docket (11/4/2025), Trump Pushes Baseless Claims of ‘Rigged’ California Election, Promises ‘Criminal Review’ of Mail Ballots

Do you remember what happened after the polls closed on November 4, 2025? Nothing! Democrats won by commanding margins everywhere, and Trump retreated into finger-pointing and scapegoating the GOP! See CBS News, (11/4/2025) Democrats sweep key races in 2025 elections in early referendum on Trump. Trump posted, “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT.”

Trump’s pre-emptive claims of “rigging” gave way to “I didn’t lose, Republicans lost” because “I wasn’t on the ballot.”

Orbán knew there was no upside in contesting his landslide loss over the weekend, just as Trump knew in November 2025 that claims of “rigging” were pointless in the face of Democratic double-digit wins everywhere.

We must remain vigilant against attempts to interfere with the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election. But we are not helpless victims. We can shape the course of history by the simple but powerful act of showing up at the ballot box. It is that easy and that hard. We did it in November 2020 and 2025; we can do it in 2026!

Let’s take confidence and hope from the people of Hungary who began the long, difficult task of reclaiming their democracy from an anti-democratic autocrat who inflicted significant damage during his tenure. We have likewise begun that long, difficult task and have made significant headway. We should look to November 2026 not with fear and anxiety, but with hope and determination!

The world turned upside down.

Developments regarding Iran over the last 72 hours make it seem like the world has turned upside down.

Trump declares blockade of Strait of Hormuz.

On Friday, Trump said the Strait of Hormuz would be open “fairly soon,” suggesting that an international coalition of nations would reopen the Strait. On Sunday, Trump announced the US “will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.” That action is likely illegal under international law (for the same reasons that Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz is illegal) and will increase the price of oil worldwide, increasing inflation in the US. CENTCOM tried to walk back Trump’s statement by limiting it to ships entering or departing from Iranian ports—an action that would also likely be illegal under international law!

Trump says US Navy will “interdict” commercial vessels that transit the Strait after paying a “toll” to Iran

Trump announced that the US would “interdict” ships that previously transited the Strait of Hormuz by paying a “toll” to Iran. See, Time, quoting Trump, “I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.”

In the old days, “interdicting” commercial ships in international waters was commonly known as “piracy.” Whatever label is attached to the US’s ‘interdiction’ of commercial vessels at sea—while Trump insists we are not at war—the US has dubious legal authority to do so.

Did the “non-existent” Iranian navy turn back two US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz?

In a weird story, CENTCOM announced that two US ships “transited” the Strait of Hormuz in a mine-clearing operation. See Al Jazeera, US says two naval ships ‘transited’ Strait of Hormuz for mine-clearing. (CENTCOM said two US ships “transited the Strait of Hormuz and operated in the Arabian Gulf as part of a broader mission to ensure the strait is fully clear of sea mines previously laid by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps)

But radio traffic intercepted by commercial ships in the region suggests that Iranian ships told the US ships to turn back and released a drone in the direction of the US ships. The Iranian government claims the US ships turned back as ordered by the Iranian ships. See Fortune, ‘This is the last warning.’ Iran threatens U.S. warships after they throw down the gauntlet for winner-take-all Strait of Hormuz.

Per Fortune, the IRGC challenged the Navy destroyers as they transited, according to a radio conversation recorded by a civilian ship that was shared with the Wall Street Journal.

“This is the last warning. This is the last warning,” the IRGC said. [¶]

Iranian media said the [US] destroyers turned around after being confronted by the IRGC, which reportedly launched a drone in the direction of the destroyers. The IRGC also said any attempt by military ships to cross the strait would be met with a “firm and forceful response.”

To be clear, the Iranian government is not a reliable narrator of events in the Gulf region. But the interception of messages by commercial ships in the area suggests that some type of interaction took place between Iranian ships and the US Navy.

So . . . what is happening? Hegseth and Trump say the Iranian navy has been destroyed. But the above reporting suggests that an Iranian vessel challenged two US ships and fired a drone in the direction of the US ships. Something seems fishy . . . .

The so-called “peace negotiations” were a sham.

I left the worst for last. Recall that Trump threatened to destroy the “whole civilization” of Iran last Tuesday. Looking for an offramp, he said that Iran’s 10-point peace proposal was a promising platform for future negotiations. The US and Iran met in Islamabad over the weekend to negotiate a peace agreement.

Long story short, after a single day of negotiations, Vice President JD Vance announced that the negotiations were a failure because Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms.” See Time.

It sounds like JD Vance is unclear on the concept of “negotiations.” If the US believes “accepting our terms” is the only way a peace negotiation can succeed, then there will never be peace. Unless a party is willing to compromise, peace negotiations are pointless.

The peace negotiations in Islamabad were a sham—as demonstrated by the fact that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were at a UFC “cage match extravaganza” as JD Vance was attempting to end a conflict that threatens the lives of US soldiers and the livelihoods of US citizens. See Daily Beast, Donald Trump Struts Around UFC Cage Match in Miami as JD Vance Flees Peace Talks in Pakistan.

Trump confirmed that the negotiations were a sham before he appeared at the cage match with the Secretary of State in tow. Before heading to the cage match, Trump told reporters he didn’t care whether the negotiations succeeded: ‘Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me.’”

Trump attacks Pope Leo as being “weak on crime.”

Sunday evening, Trump claimed that the only reason the American Pope Leo XIV was elected was that “they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”

But it gets worse. Trump accused Pope Leo of being “weak on crime,” an ironic statement from a guy who pardoned 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists and has promised mass pardons on his last day in office to “anyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office.” More to the point, Trump has no idea about the teachings of Jesus or Christian theology, which prominently feature forgiveness and mercy.

Concluding Thoughts

We can see the promise of a post-Trump America in the Hungarian people's victory over Orban. Like us, they have a long way to go to repair the damage inflicted by a single autocratic leader. But the journey must begin somewhere. We have started on our path of resistance and renewal. We have a long way to go, but we are on the path. That is enough for today. Tomorrow will bring more challenges, and we will face them as they come, one at a time.