Once again, with Orban’s defeat, we have a chance to break this useless, deadly loop. And once again, we’re all distracted—this time with a Trump-Jesus picture.
CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS, UKRAINE—Just when Russia’s grip on the Western conservative imagination starts to crack—right on cue, something shiny appears, and the moment slips away unused. It has happened again and again since February 2022. It is happening right now.
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The latest distraction: the American president’s war with the American pope, plus President Trump posting an image of himself as Jesus. Don’t get sucked in.
Here is what actually matters this week: Viktor Orbán lost. And that loss is an earthquake, cracking open one hell of a chance—if Europe can do the thing to which it is most allergic: act.
Now Europe has a chance to seize the moment—before Russia opens the next doll.
MAGA romanticized Orbán’s Hungary. European populists adored the Budapest ballyhoo. And Orbán leveraged that admiration to give cover to every pro-Russia instinct in the Western conservative movement. The implicit argument was poisonous but compelling: you can be based, trad, anti-globalist and soft on Putin. Orbán was the proof of concept.
That proof of concept is gone. Because Hungarians—who are still based, still trad, still against unfettered migration—made something clear: whatever else one wants to debate, Russia is evil and must be kept out of Europe, including Ukraine.
Sending European troops to Lviv would shift control of the global geopolitical conversation away from Trump for a moment.
Peter Magyar, literally Peter the Hungarian, may or may not be a reliable friend to Ukraine. That is, right now, beside the point—though he did signal on 13 April that Ukraine must be defended. What the Hungarian election says is this: Even one of the most self-consciously traditional countries in Europe looked at Orbán’s Russia alignment and said no. Russia is no redoubt of virtue. It is the enemy of freedom and tradition.
Sławomir Cenckiewicz, chief of Polish President Karol Nawrocki’s National Security Bureau, 𝕏cut through the Orbán mourning on the European right with precision:
“[Orbán] was Poland’s ally only in the showdown with the cosmopolitans and centralists in the EU, as well as on migration.
That was important, but not enough—and the recently revealed recordings of conversations between the Hungarian prime minister and foreign minister with Putin and Lavrov are an exemplification of all this. The relativization of this [Orban’s submission to Russia] on Poland’s anti-Russian right was amistake, to put it mildly.”
That is the Hungarian lesson. Orbán was never the ally the European right imagined. The recordings confirmed what the energy policy, the Three Seas sabotage, the NATO foot-dragging, and the Ukraine hatred had already shown.
The most achievable, most signal-rich move available to Europe:publicly announce 40 non-combatant European troops to Lviv to assess air defense vulnerabilities.
Now Europe has a chance to seize the moment—before Russia opens the next doll.
Bulgaria votes April 19—five days from now. A pro-Russian result there would absorb much of the oxygen Magyar’s win just created. Bulgaria is more EU-dependent and, for now, a smaller player, but Russia would seize the optics—and a Sofia veto on Ukraine could become the new Budapest bone spur. The window between these two elections is the narrowest and most important diplomatic corridor in months. Europe must put something in it.
The most achievable, most signal-rich move available to Europe: publicly announce 40 non-combatant European troops to Lviv to assess air defense vulnerabilities. Symbolic in scale. Serious in signal. It shows Russia’s red lines are paper tigers. It uses the Hungarian energy before it dissipates.
Sending just a few European troops to Lviv would shift control of the global geopolitical conversation away from Trump for a moment. Europe can say, “hey, we are going to stop talking—no one was listening, not even ourselves. Instead, we’re going to one-up Trump and actually do something.”
Trump does things and gets key results swiftly while the rest of the West talks for years on end: Bye Maduro, bye Ayatollah. Now of course the aftermath and followup are messy and in need of refinement, and so into this breach Europe can say: We, too, are going to do something but in a smarter way: Forty soldiers to Lviv. Send the message. Open possibilities. You don’t have to “fix it all” at once, American style. Be like Ukrainians: piece by piece, malo po-malu, little by little.
And on the American side of the ledger, there is another opening. Catholic convert JD Vance—who still will not condemn Putin’s war on Europe’s largest Christian nation—spent last week delivering two juicy, major failures.
Trump set Vance up for both failures: The president sent his vice president on impossible negotiations in Pakistan regarding Iran, and days later Trump sent Vance to campaign for Orbán. Perhaps POTUS knew these were hopeless errands. Trump has now tied Vance to losers, which may matter enormously in a Rubio vs. Vance 2028 primary—which will matter for the free world: Rubio’s statecraft versus Vance’s blundering.
Step further away from the papal tiger and Trump Jesus picture noise and you’ll see something more significant: In recent weeks Trump has turned his guns on the pro-Russian voices within MAGA—Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens—for various reasons, including their opposition to his Iran intervention. Trump positioned himself as the reasonable one, condemning Candace for bizarrely insisting the French First Lady is a man.
Jones, Carlson, Owens, and their pals are the same people who have lied to America about Ukraine for years, claiming Russia is what Ukraine actually is: a based, faithful, freedom-defending nation.
So, widen this rift. Show that the problem with Tucker and Candace is not only that they oppose Trump’s Iran intervention—it’s that they support what Beijing and Moscow support, always.
Seize the chance in America: make clear that the pro-Russian voices in MAGA aren’t just wrong on Ukraine—they’re wrong on everything, because they take their cues from the enemy.
Seize the chance in Europe: Send non-combatant troops to Lviv now.
The window is open. Orbán is gone. Vance and the pro-Russians in MAGA are tied to losers. The Bulgarian elections are in five days.
The Pope said he’s not afraid of Trump. He can manage that situation. Everyone else: focus and act on saving Europe and Ukraine from Russia.
