Rami Khouri: U.S. & Israel Were “Forced into Two Ceasefires” as Regional Balance of Power Shifts | Democracy Now!

Rami Khouri: U.S. & Israel Were “Forced into Two Ceasefires” as Regional Balance of Power Shifts | Democracy Now!

Middle East crisis live: US officials to travel to Pakistan for talks as Trump warns US will ‘knock out’ every power plant if Iran doesn’t accept deal

London’s Metropolitan Police deputy commissioner Matt Jukes (C), deputy assistant commissioner Vicki Evans (L) and Mathew Walker (R) make a statement to the media by an area cordoned off by police, near the Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow, north-west London on April 19, 2026Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

Today so far

• "Iran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Saturday that the recent talks with the US had made progress but gaps remained over nuclear issues and the strait of Hormuz. “We have had progress but there is still a big distance between us,” he told state media, referring to talks last weekend. “We made progress in the negotiations, but there are many gaps and some fundamental points remain.”

• Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian weighed in on Sunday about Donald Trump and efforts to quash Iranian nuclear capabilities. “Trump says Iran cannot make use of its nuclear rights but doesn’t say for what crime. Who is he to deprive a nation of its rights?” Pezeshkian said.

• In more nuclear news, Iranian deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh told the Associated Press that contrary to Trump’s earlier claims, Iran will not hand over its enriched uranium to the US.

• In Lebanon, killing and destruction has continued despite a fragile ceasefire. An Israeli soldier was killed in southern Lebanon in an incident that severely wounded another soldiers and moderately injured four more, while another succombed on Saturday to injuries incured in another incident. Meanwhile, the state-run National News Agency is reporting that the Israeli military has demolished homes in the towns of Bayyada and Naqoura and have blocked roads leading to several towns. Lebanese state media also reported that Israeli forces on Saturday began demolishing homes in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil and other border towns where Israeli troops are present.

• Earlier, a UN peacekeeper was killed and three others were injured in an attack that UN secretary-general António Guterres has strongly condemned. Both Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and the group known as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon blamed Hezbollah, but the militant group has denied involvement.

• In Gaza, the Israeli military killed two Unicef-contracted truck drivers at a water point in the northern Gaza forcing the UN agency to suspend its operations in the area, Unicef said.

06.07 EDT

Here are some more images coming out of Lebanon today of residents forced to traverse broken bridges and destroyed roads to return home during the temporary ceasefire:

Displaced people cross on foot over a destroyed bridge in Tayr Felsay village as they return to their homes during a temporary ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel on 19 April 2026. Photograph: Bilal Hussein/AP

Displaced people cross on foot over a destroyed bridge in Tayr Felsay village as they return to their homes during a temporary ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel on 19 April 2026. Photograph: Bilal Hussein/AP

Lebanese army soldiers set up a makeshift bridge for people to cross a river in Tayr Felsay, a village in southern Lebanon, on 19 April 2026. Photograph: Bilal Hussein/AP

Displaced people drive across a temporary bridge on their way home in Bedias, Lebanon on 19 April 2026. Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock"

Middle East crisis live: US officials to travel to Pakistan for talks as Trump warns US will ‘knock out’ every power plant if Iran doesn’t accept deal

Opinion | The Divine Right of Presidents Is a Dangerous Idea - The New York Times

I Missed the Part About the Divine Right of Presidents

April 19, 2026

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

"In January, 2024 Donald Trump supporters made a video called “God Made Trump.” It was in the style of Paul Harvey’s famous speech “So God Made a Farmer.” It even included a simulation of the legendary broadcaster’s voice, and it began like this:

“And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump.”

For more than two minutes, the video waxes eloquent about Trump’s alleged virtues, and then it declares that he’s a “shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave nor forsake them.”

Trump liked the video so much he shared it from his Truth Social account.

At a White House event on April 1, a few days before Easter, Paula White-Cain, an evangelical Christian pastor and the president’s chief spiritual adviser, told him to his face that he was the “greatest champion of faith that we’ve ever seen in a president,” and then she compared his story to Jesus Christ’s. “You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,” she said, “It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us.”

“And sir,” she continued, “because of his resurrection, you rose up.”

I’ve picked out two prominent examples of Trump supporters’ comparing him to Christ, but they’re drops in an ocean of similar analogies. As my friend Skye Jethani, a Christian writer and former pastor, said on the Holy Post podcast, for the last 10 years Christians have been comparing Trump to various biblical figures.

So it should have come as no surprise to anyone that last Monday he finally made the comparison himself. He posted an image on Truth Social that depicted the president as Jesus healing a sick man, with worshipers looking on in adoration, a flag of the United States waving in the background and mysterious figures floating in the sky.

The image was clearly blasphemous, and I was gratified to see a number of people whom I’d consider MAGA Christians strongly criticize the president. For example, a popular right-wing commentator, Cam Higby, posted: “I support Trump, and I spend 8 hours a day defending him. I will not defend blasphemy.” Riley Gaines, a college swimmer turned conservative podcaster, tweeted to her 1.6 million followers on X: “Why? Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this?”

But it’s too little, too late. Rather than offering the absurd explanation that he thought he was posting an image of himself not as Jesus but as a physician (“I thought it was me as a doctor,” he said. “I make people better.”) he could have simply pointed at a host of his most loyal Christian followers and said, with his trademark sneer, “You started it.”

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Much of the commentary after Trump’s blasphemy has been directed at the church. Will Christians condemn what he did? How can they continue to support a man who brazenly violates the Ten Commandments. (“You shall have no other gods before me.”) How much has evangelical support for Trump damaged the church? Is there anything he can do that will break the bond between evangelicals and the president?

But there’s another vitally important question that hovers in the air. How much is Christian zeal for Trump damaging America, and the world?

When the church abandons its rightful role as the conscience of the state and instead seeks to curry favor with the state, there is a real-world consequence. If you take an already grandiose man (whose commercial brand is his own name) and fill him with a sense of divine purpose, you can uncage a tyrant.

To consider the contrast between the biblical model of religious conscience and the actions of Trump’s Christian loyalists, recall one of the most famous confrontations with power in the Old Testament, between a prophet named Nathan and King David.

To conceal his sexual exploitation of a married woman, Bathsheba, David ordered her husband, Uriah, into the thick of combat, effectively murdering him. Nathan confronted David with an allegory of a rich man who stole a lamb from a poor man.

When David expressed anger at the rich man, Nathan revealed the key of his allegory and opened the door by saying, “You are the man.” In a moment of courage that has echoed for thousands of years, he said to the divinely ordained king of Israel: “You had Uriah the Hittite killed in battle. You took his wife as your wife. You used the Ammonites to kill him.”

In the biblical story, David repents immediately and writes one of the most memorable psalms in Scripture. “Have mercy upon me, O God,” it begins, “According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions.”

Now let’s look to the words of Franklin Graham, one of the most prominent evangelicals in America — and one of Trump’s most zealous supporters.

In a public statement after Trump posted the image of himself as Jesus, Graham pretended to believe Trump’s absurd explanation of the image, writing, “I’m thankful the President has made it very clear that this was not at all what he thought the AI-generated image was representing — he thought it was a doctor helping someone, and when he learned of the concerns, he immediately removed the post.” But Graham didn’t stop there. He lashed out against Trump’s critics, “I think his enemies are always foaming at the mouth at any possible opportunity to make him look bad,” he wrote.

Someone else is always to blame.

One gets the feeling that if Graham were alive in King David’s era, he’d be defending David, telling him that Nathan was “foaming at the mouth,” falsely accusing him of murder. I can hear the defenses now.

“Can you really be blamed when a soldier of yours dies in combat?”

“That would never hold up in court.”

“The Ammonites killed Uriah, not you! They’re the criminals here — and, besides, this thing with Bathsheba and so forth is nobody’s business.”

As a thought experiment, ask yourself how a president would behave if he believed he was clothed with divine purpose? Wouldn’t he try to expand his power beyond all previous limits? After all, he’s on a mission from God. Or maybe he thinks he’s like God? It’s hard to type those words, but that’s exactly the meaning of the image Trump shared.

Wouldn’t he feel free to start wars based on his judgment alone, based on his command alone? What is Article I of the Constitution compared with the will of the Almighty?

And wouldn’t such a man be jealous of his religious rivals in the battle for the hearts and minds of American Christians? I don’t think it’s possible to separate Trump’s public fight with Pope Leo XIV and the Catholic Church from his own sense of divine authority.

Pope Leo’s pleas for peace are hardly unprecedented. I distinctly remember Pope John Paul II’s strong objections to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet an American president has never responded to a pope with personal attacks and lies as Trump has.

And when he did, Vice President JD Vance, a relatively recent convert to Catholicism, responded (incredibly enough) by scolding the pope. “In the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy,” he said, “I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.”

One pernicious effect of Trump’s attacks is to stir up long-buried divisions between Catholics and Protestants. Papal conspiracies have a long and sad history in Protestant Christianity, and oceans of blood have been spilled in the wars between the different strands of world Christianity.

In fact, this second Trump term has been one long experiment in what happens when a president and a movement discard the wisdom of the founders. A man like Trump was supposed to be hemmed in by a combination of law and morality.

As I’ve written before, presidents were put in a Madisonian box, meaning that he was constrained by both the language of the Constitution and the example of a person, George Washington. Washington could have grasped total control, but instead he limited his authority. He demonstrated forbearance against his enemies. In many ways, he defined what it meant to be the leader of a republic.

Trump sees it differently. “My own morality,” he told us. “My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” And his own morality includes imagining himself as the Son of God in a social media post.

The American system was built to contain personal power, to prevent religious strife and to limit the nation’s ability to go to war. Trump blows through the constraints on the executive branch, stokes religious conflict and sends the world’s most powerful nation to war based on his judgment alone. To make matters worse, he’s full of divine purpose. He’s told the world that he was “saved by God to make America great again.”

When you dismantle a system that was intended to prevent ancient evils from destroying the new world, you can help unleash those evils back on the world. Catholics and Protestants feud once again. A world leader who is infused with religious purpose picks a fight with the Vatican. And the great powers inch toward conflict, with a president of the United States who refuses to recognize any moral or legal limits on his power at all."

Opinion | The Divine Right of Presidents Is a Dangerous Idea - The New York Times

For Iran, Flexing Control Over Waterway Is New Deterrent - The New York Times

For Iran, Flexing Control Over Waterway Is New Deterrent

"Iran’s government could emerge from the conflict with a blueprint to keep adversaries at bay, regardless of any restrictions on its nuclear program.

April 18, 2026

A satellite image showing ships’ movements in a section of the Strait of Hormuz this month.Copernicus Sentinel-2, via Reuters

The United States and Israel launched their war against Iran on the argument that if Iran one day got a nuclear weapon, it would have the ultimate deterrent against future attacks.

It turns out that Iran already has a deterrent: its own geography.

Iran’s decision to flex its control over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic choke point through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows, has brought global economic pain in the form of higher prices for gasoline, fertilizer and other staples. It has upended war planning in the United States and Israel, where officials have had to devise military options to wrest the strait from Iranian control.

The U.S.-Israeli war has significantly damaged Iran’s leadership structure, larger naval vessels and missile production facilities, but it has done little to restrict Iran’s ability to control the strait.

Iran could thus emerge from the conflict with a blueprint for its hard-line theocratic government to keep its adversaries at bay, regardless of any restrictions on its nuclear program.

“Everyone now knows that if there is a conflict in the future, closing the strait will be the first thing in the Iranian textbook,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israel’s military intelligence agency and now a fellow at the Atlantic Council. “You cannot beat geography.”

In several social media posts on Friday, President Trump said that the strait, which in one post he called the “Strait of Iran,” was “completely open” to shipping. Iran’s foreign minister made a similar declaration. On Saturday, however, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the waterway remained closed, suggesting a divide among Iranian military and civilians on the issue  during negotiations to end the war.

Whereas just the prospect of sea mines is enough to scare off commercial shipping, Iran retains far more precise means of control: attack drones and short-range missiles. American military and intelligence officials estimate that, after weeks of war, Iran still has about 40 percent of its arsenal of attack drones and upward of 60 percent of its missile launchers — more than enough to hold shipping in the Strait of Hormuz hostage in the future.

A central goal of the U.S.-led military campaign in Iran is now reopening the strait, which was open when the war began. It is a precarious position for the United States, and its adversaries have taken notice.

“It’s not clear how the truce between Washington and Tehran will play out. But one thing is certain — Iran has tested its nuclear weapons. It’s called the Strait of Hormuz. Its potential is inexhaustible,” Dmitri Medvedev, a former president of Russia and deputy chairman of the country’s security council, wrote on social media last week.

Iran’s control over the strait forced President Trump to announce a naval blockade of his own, and this week the U.S. Navy began forcing cargo ships into Iranian ports after they transited the waterway.

Iran responded with anger, but also taunting. “The Strait of Hormuz isn’t social media. If someone blocks you, you can’t just block them back,” one Iranian diplomatic outpost, which has posted snarky messages throughout the war, wrote on X in response to Mr. Trump’s move. The dispute over the strait has been the focus of numerous A.I.-generated videos depicting American and Israeli officials as Lego characters.

Still, the impact of the American blockade has been real. Seaborne trade accounts for roughly 90 percent of Iran’s economic output — approximately $340 million per day — and that flow in recent days has largely ground to a halt.

Iran considers the blockade an act of war and has threatened to attack it. But so far it has not, nor has the United States tried during the current cease-fire to reduce Iran’s grip over the strait when the conflict finally ends.

“It may be that both countries see there is a real window to have negotiations” and don’t want to escalate the conflict right now, Adm. Kevin Donegan, who once commanded the U.S. Navy’s fleet with responsibility for the Middle East and is now retired, said during a seminar hosted by the Middle East Institute this week.

Iran tried to block the Strait of Hormuz once before, mining it and the Persian Gulf during the conflict with Iraq during the 1980s. But mine warfare is dangerous, and decades later Iran has effectively harnessed missile and drone technology to threaten both commercial and military maritime traffic.

While the U.S. and Israeli war significantly damaged Iran’s weapons manufacturing capability, Iran has preserved enough of its missiles, launchers and one-way attack drones to put shipping in the strait at risk.

U.S. intelligence and military estimates vary, but multiple officials said that Iran has about 40 percent of its prewar arsenal of drones. Those drones have proved to be a powerful deterrent. While they are easily shot down by American warships, commercial tankers have few defenses.

Iran also has ample supplies of missiles and missile launchers. At the time of the cease-fire, Iran had access to about half its missile launchers. In the days that immediately followed, it dug out about 100 systems that had been buried inside caves and bunkers, bringing its stockpile of launchers back up to about 60 percent of its prewar level.

Iran is also digging out its supply of missiles, similarly buried in rubble from American attacks on its bunkers and depots. When that work is done, Iran could reclaim as much as 70 percent of its prewar arsenal, according to some American estimates.

Officials note that the counts of Iran’s weapon stocks are not precise. Intelligence assessments offer a broad look at how much power Iran retains.

But while estimates of Iran’s missile stockpiles differ, there is agreement among officials that Iran has enough weaponry to halt shipping in the future.

Iran’s government chose not to block the Strait of Hormuz last June, when Israel launched a military campaign that United States eventually joined to hit deeply buried nuclear sites.

Mr. Citrinowicz, the former Israeli official, said that decision probably reflected the cautious approach of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who may have been concerned that blocking the strait could have led other countries to join the military campaign against Iran.

Ayatollah Khamenei was killed during the first day of the current war, a move that signaled to Iranian officials that American and Israeli goals for this conflict were far more expansive.

Iran “saw the June war as an Israeli war for their own strategic objectives,” Mr. Citrinowicz said. “This is a regime change war.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Mark Mazzetti is an investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security, intelligence, and foreign affairs. He has written a book about the C.I.A.

Adam Entous is a Washington-based investigative reporter focused on national security and intelligence matters.

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades."

For Iran, Flexing Control Over Waterway Is New Deterrent - The New York Times

U.S. Senator Warnock Calls for Moral Vision in Politics | MLK Lecture 2026

 

The FBI Director Is MIA

​

“FBI Director Kash Patel experienced a panic attack, believing he had been fired due to a technical issue. He is reportedly concerned about his job security, with some attributing this to excessive drinking and others to the possibility of being replaced after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s departure.

​

Kash Patel has alarmed colleagues with episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.

Sarah FitzpatrickApril 17, 2026, 6:20 PM ET

Michael M. Santiago / Getty

On Friday, April 10, as FBI Director Kash Patel was preparing to leave work for the weekend, he struggled to log into an internal computer system. He quickly became convinced that he had been locked out, and he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to announce that he had been fired by the White House, according to nine people familiar with his outreach. Two of these people described his behavior as a “freak-out.”

Patel oversees an agency that employs roughly 38,000 people, including many who are trained to investigate and verify information that can be presented under oath in a court of law. News of his emotional outburst ricocheted through the bureau, prompting chatter among officials and, in some corners of the building, expressions of relief. The White House fielded calls from the bureau and from members of Congress asking who was now in charge of the FBI.

It turned out that the answer was still Patel. He had not been fired. The access problem, two people familiar with the matter said, appears to have been a technical error, and it was quickly resolved. “It was all ultimately bullshit,” one FBI official told me.

But Patel, according to multiple current officials, as well as former officials who have stayed close to him, is deeply concerned that his job is in jeopardy. He has good reasons to think so—including some having to do with what witnesses described to me as bouts of excessive drinking. My colleague Ashley Parker and I reported earlier this month that Patel was among the officials expected to be fired after Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ouster, on April 2. “We’re all just waiting for the word” that Patel is officially out of the top job, an FBI official told me this week, and a former official told my colleague Jonathan Lemire that Patel was “rightly paranoid.” Senior members of the Trump administration are already discussing who might replace him, according to an administration official and two people close to the White House who were familiar with the conversations.“ 

Zohran Mamdani says Iran war speaks to a “broken kind of politics” | Newsmakers

 

 

JD Vance’s Very Bad Week

​

“The defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a model for the illiberal authoritarianism admired by some on the American right, signals potential trouble for the MAGA movement. Orban’s loss, despite efforts by figures like JD Vance to support him, highlights the risks of overreach and the limitations of a political project centered on authoritarianism rather than human flourishing. This development may create an intellectual crisis for the postliberal right in the U.S.

​

What recent events in Europe can tell us about the future of Trumpism.

April 18, 2026

From Hungary to the Pope, the Right’s Very Bad Week

What recent events in Europe can tell us about the future of Trumpism.

Despite Vice President JD Vance’s best efforts, Hungary ousted the illiberal authoritarian Viktor Orban this week. As the columnist David French argues, Orbanism was “intellectual Trumpism,” and the prime minister’s defeat could signal trouble for the MAGA movement in the United States. In this episode, French discusses what Orban’s demise means for Trump with the columnist Michelle Goldberg, who just got back from Hungary, and the national politics writer Michelle Cottle.

From Hungary to the Pope, the Right’s Very Bad Week

What recent events in Europe can tell us about the future of Trumpism.

Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle. I cover National Politics for New York Times Opinion, and this week I am here with two of my fantastic colleagues, columnist David French, and the other Michelle, Michelle Goldberg. Guys, thanks for being here.

David French: Michelle, Michelle — great to be with you all.

Michelle Goldberg: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Cottle: We’re going to test David’s ability to pivot between the Michelles today.

So, we’re going to talk about the defeat of a MAGA favorite, Viktor Orban, in Hungary, and we’ve got to talk about the pope, so there’s a lot to cover. Let’s get into it. First up, the Hungarian election, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party got absolutely creamed.

Michelle, you’ve been over there, you’ve been reporting from Hungary — you were there until like just the last couple of days or so. What is Orban’s connection to Donald Trump and MAGA, and why does this loss matter?

Goldberg: Sure. Well, Orban was prime minister in the early 2000s. Then he was defeated. When he came back, he really set about creating what he called “an illiberal democracy,” and it was the template for a lot of modern authoritarians all over the world, very much including Trump.

And, you know, JD Vance has said that some of what Orban does should be a model for conservatives. Kevin D. Roberts, the head of The Heritage Foundation, has said that Orban’s state isn’t a model, but the model for conservative statecraft. Orban had a two-thirds majority, which is what you need to rewrite the Constitution. So, he rewrote the Constitution. One of the things he did was create these wildly gerrymandered districts that made it very, very difficult for the opposition. He created a network of foundations. He both was able to shut down the preeminent liberal university in Budapest and then set up his own parallel, right-wing educational institutions. He forced the sale of media outlets to regime-aligned oligarchs, which may sound familiar to people in the United States.

Cottle: I’ve got to say, I’m having shades of Trump panic here.

Goldberg: Well, yeah. I think one of the things that’s striking about being there, is that this was a process of 16 years. And if you look at how much Donald Trump has done over less than two years, it’s kind of alarming. On the other hand, Hungary shows that even when this is very, very entrenched, with enough popular will you can overcome it.

But Orban really held himself out as the model for a new regime at a time when people felt like liberal democracy was exhausted, and he invested a lot of state money — a lot of Hungarian money — into building out this network in other places.

There’s a whole subculture in Budapest of these American expats working at state-subsidized think tanks, writing about how heavenly it is to live in the Orban regime. And I was actually at an event at the Danube Institute, which is one of these think tanks, earlier in the week. And they were all glum because they could sort of see where things were going. And one of the speakers actually said, “Without the Hungarian taxpayer, we wouldn’t have this right-wing infrastructure in Europe,” which I thought was a stunning admission. And I don’t know that the Hungarian taxpayers realized that they were subsidizing this new intellectual infrastructure.

Cottle: David, what are your thoughts? What hit you?

French: You know, it is difficult to understate how much, for part of the Trump right, Hungary was the model. This was the wave of the future. Look, I would not ascribe that to Trump. From the beginning, I think of Trumpism as just the will to power of one man, Donald Trump. It’s not a coherent ideology, but a lot of people who want to have a coherent ideology of illiberalism and authoritarianism have attached themselves to Trump. And I would say Orbanism was what you might call “intellectual Trumpism.” In other words, how do you create a political philosophy around this concept of the strong man in a Western democracy? And Orban was the model. He was the guy. Now, I found all of this deeply confusing. I remember in the ’80s and ’90s, having all these arguments with my liberal friends, who are holding out Norway as the model of social democracy. And I’m like, “Guys. Small Scandinavian countries are not one-to-one comparisons with the U.S.” I was completely right.

I just didn’t know which region of Europe, which small country, was going to be the model for the U.S. Apparently, it’s Central Europe. And a small Central European country is the model. And it was important enough for the intellectual Trump right, for JD Vance to go there, to actually essentially appear in a campaign rally to interfere blatantly, grotesquely in the election. And then after Orban loses, it was like, “Oh, but the right won anyway, because Peter Magyar is conservative, and is more conservative than the rest of the European Union.”

And look, he is a conservative politician by European definitions — or a right-wing politician by European definitions — but very fundamentally different in the approach to liberal democracy. That was always the beef with Orban. It wasn’t so much that he was a right-leaning politician, it was the illiberal authoritarianism. That’s why Trumpists here at home found him compelling. It wasn’t his right-leaning ideology, it was his illiberal authoritarianism. And it’s the defeat of that illiberal authoritarianism that is really the big development out of Europe.

Goldberg: I just want to say one quick thing about the comparison between Norway and Hungary, right? So, I take your point that maybe you can’t base a model for American governance on these relatively small European countries, but I think the big difference is that Norway at least works on its own terms, right? Like, Norway is a thriving, happy, rich, successful country, whereas even on the right’s own terms, Hungary has become one of the  poorest countries in the E.U., right? It is the most corrupt on many measures. One of Orban’s big policies was that he was going to raise the birthrate. I mean, he hasn’t; the birthrate is really, really low. I think it’s 1.31, or something like that.

And so, the model doesn’t even work on its own terms, which is another reason why I think that this has been such a blow. Because — this is not on the same scale, but think about American leftists grappling with the failure of Communism, and what it means when your God has failed. This is a much lesser God, but the failure is still, I think, going to create an intellectual crisis.

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Cottle: So, somebody talked to me about JD Vance’s role over there. It seems to me that it was extremely risky to send him. I mean, I get his fanboy tendencies with Hungary. Especially because he himself is a very enthusiastic natalist. I can see some of the appeal. But to send the vice president over there, to wrap his arms around Orban on the eve of these elections, and then have such a spectacular belly flop. What do you make of this little adventure, and what happens now in terms of where it takes the postliberal right in the U.S. and what it does for that movement? David, go first.

French: Can I call this “the Strait of Hormuz of electoral interventions”?

Cottle: Please do.

French: So, one of the things that has happened is that you have seen MAGA take this view where they don’t believe bad news now, or bad polls or negative reports.

Cottle: It’s all fake.

French: It’s all fake. There’s a good reason why, for example, there’s some skepticism towards polls. In all three of Trump’s presidential elections, he outperformed his polling. But this would’ve been outperforming by orders of magnitude greater. But what we have seen is a consistent pattern with the administration; just overreaches and overreaches and overreaches. There’s this underlying hubris, that they can bend the world to their will. And it’s interesting, Michelle, I honestly think that what was the political project of Orbanism — if you were going to hear the right — it really wasn’t to turn Hungary into a thriving democracy. The political project was authoritarianism, sustainable authoritarianism — that was the political project. Because for years, when I was writing against this Hungarian experiment in conservative media, and I was comparing Hungary to all kinds of other countries on exactly those metrics, Michelle — birth rate, economic prosperity.

I mean, the contrast between Poland and Hungary is just extreme here. It’s a large contrast. But that was not what was motivating them here. It was not really, “I’ve gone to Hungary because Hungary has shown how to make its citizens happier, healthier, and more prosperous.” It was, “I’ve gone to Hungary because Orban has shown how to deal with Wokesters.” And it’s the failure of that particular political enterprise, which was not really rooted in human flourishing and mutual and shared prosperity. It’s the failure of that particular enterprise, and what they thought of as sustainable authoritarianism — that’s the real blow there.

Goldberg: Right, and can I say something that has been driving me crazy since the election? I think you’re hearing this over and over again. The new line is, “Well, the fact that he lost and there looks like there’s going to be a peaceful transition of power —— ”

French: Oh yeah.

Goldberg: “Proves that he was never an authoritarian to begin with.” I would point out that there was a peaceful transition after the fall of Communism in 1989, and nobody says that proves that Communism was never authoritarian.

But also, I went to one of the last Peter Magyar rallies in this town, a few hours from Budapest, in the northeast — kind of a Fidesz stronghold and a town of like 16,000. Pretty run-down. A lot of Soviet-style architecture is still around. And there were well over a thousand people that turned out in this square. And Peter Magyar kept saying: “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid.” And the people were chanting: “We are not afraid.” And so, I asked a woman, “What does he mean? What have you been afraid of?” And she was an elementary school teacher, and she told me that, in the past, she would’ve been afraid to show her support for the opposition, because she would have feared that she would lose her job and her ability to support her family. And it was only seeing this tidal wave of people that made her think that there was a preference cascade. But you hear that kind of thing all the time. And what’s so frustrating is that, on the one hand, it’s this strong-hand, to put it lightly, that the MAGA-right admires, and now that it’s been rebuked, they want to pretend that it was never there to begin with.

French: Right, right. Exactly.

Cottle: That’s part of the whole, “Admit no defeat,” right? It’s just baked into that movement, that nothing is truly a defeat. But you mentioned Poland, Michelle, and you’ve reported from there, where the far-right Law and Justice Party undermined democratic norms for nearly a decade, before it was booted in 2023. So, what have they done to rebuild that democracy? And is there a lesson, or lessons, for Hungary to pull from that?

Goldberg: Well, in some ways it was a similar election, in that it was the center-pro-European-right versus the far-populist-right. It’s much more difficult in Poland, even though the Law and Justice Party hadn’t become quite as entrenched, because of the size of the victory in Hungary.

So, when I was in Poland, it was just a few months after the election, and what the government was dealing with is, I think, what we’re going to end up dealing with here, too. Which is, when you have all of these regime cronies infiltrated into all of these institutions, it becomes very hard to remove them without traducing democratic norms yourself, right? And so, it’s this paradox of reform.

In Poland, they had created these new judicial roles. They had done complicated things to shore up the judiciary. How do you undo that without exerting extra-judicial powers yourself? The difference in Hungary — and again, we don’t know how this is going to play out — but because Peter Magyar won what they call there a “constitutional majority,” — he won two-thirds — his party is going to be able to revise the Hungarian Constitution. And so, they have a much freer hand to undo what Orban has done.

Cottle: David, what does Peter Magyar, what kind of challenge is he facing with this and ridding the country, cleansing it of this authoritarian bent? They took 16 years to get this project rolling.

French: I think Michelle identified the problem very well, and it’s a version of the problem that we are going to face the next time there is a non-Trumpist, or a Democratic administration. And that is, if one of the violations of norms was purging the bureaucracy and replacing it with your own loyalists, is the correction to that purging the bureaucracy again? And have you, essentially, created a pattern where — in the desire to avoid something like the corrupt ideological spoil system — you then push it to another level, because you have to try to cleanse the products of the corrupt ideological spoil system. Which then the other side codes and understands it as “just a purge of my allies.” And you realize how much one person, who is breaking both legal and traditional moral norms around democracy, how much they can do a generation-long amount of damage.

Cottle: OK, so I want to be a little bit of a worrywart on this. You’re talking about what happens when we have moved beyond the Trump era, and how we get back to some sort of democratic norms ——

French: You’re saying that may be wildly optimistic.

Cottle: We still have a few years. And so, what lessons do we think that this administration and this president will take from what happened to Orban, and what could we be looking at?

Goldberg: So, I’m not sure that Trump is capable of learning these kinds of lessons. I mean, you could argue that they would say: “Well, this requires an even greater level of repression.”

Cottle: That’s what keeps me up.

Goldberg: I hate to be Pollyannaish about this country, because God knows I feel a tremendous sense of despair and horror. But at the end of the day, the reason I think Orban didn’t try to steal the election — even though there were weird, dirty tricks in the run-up to it; there was this false flag accusation of Ukrainian sabotage; there were things that Orban was doing that it looked like he might be tiptoeing up to some state of emergency. And we’ll never know how real that danger was. But I think part of the reason that they didn’t attempt anything like that was because the opposition was just so overwhelming. You could see it everywhere. They just couldn’t have gotten away with it. And I would say, similarly, Donald Trump’s coalition — although he still has his hardcore base — you already see it falling apart. And a lot of the people who would’ve been, in the past, cheerleaders for some of the most radical action that Donald Trump could take — who would’ve been out there excusing or encouraging a Jan. 6-type thing — those people have fallen off the wagon. Alex Jones is gone. Candace Owens is gone.

Cottle: When you’ve lost Candace Owens.

Goldberg: Tucker Carlson is wondering if Donald Trump is the Antichrist, which is maybe a conversation for another episode of this podcast ——

Cottle: On the religious overtones.

Goldberg: And so, I don’t want to underestimate how much power Donald Trump still has. He has the military. But I think that the loss of a lot of his most powerful propagandists, would just make it much, much harder.

Cottle: Yeah. David?

French: You know, I think you’re already seeing the smarter folks in MAGA looking at Hungary, looking at the collapse in support, looking at the Iran war — I mean, the Iran war was a breakpoint beyond the Epstein files, especially in the most hardcore elements of the MAGA right. Because if you were on the other side of them in the 2024 election, all they ever would say to you was: “Warmonger, you want to go to war with Iran.” So, for a segment of these people, it has been a bridge too far. But here’s where I want to introduce a thought to people’s minds: This part of MAGA, that has broken with him, has broken with him not necessarily because this was an unconstitutional war, but because they’re furious at him; because his foreign policy is distracting them from the real mission, which is the enemy within. And so, part of the frustration with MAGA is that Trump hasn’t concentrated enough on the left, in suppressing the left in this country.  Even if Trump loses — and let’s just say Democrats sweep the midterms, Democrats win the next presidential election and return to power — then the question is really going to be, is this populist reaction, that is now drifting increasingly antisemitic, just what the opposition party’s going to be in America? Or would the defeat of that form of the opposition party result in a change in the opposition party? And that’s what we don’t know.

So, I’m sitting here hoping that a defeat of the populist version of the Republican Party could mean at least a ghost of a chance that you have a revival of a classical liberal version of a Republican Party. But I could see it going the other way. And I feel like in Hungary we’re getting a small European version of a dilemma we’re going to be facing. And Poland was interesting.

One last quick thing on Poland: I did this really fun and interesting interview with a Polish law professor, and she, along with a number of judges and other law professors, had done a massive program on civic education in Poland, where they had done things like go to local communities, judges and law professors, and teach people what the rule of law is, what constitutional law is. It wasn’t, “Vote for this person and not this person,” — it was a massive civic education program. And that has stuck with me ever since. One thing we absolutely need in this country is a massive civic education program, so that people understand what it is that we are about to lose here in this country if the present trends continue towards Trumpist authoritarianism.

Goldberg: Can I say two quick things? When you talked about the judges — and I know what you mean about the judges in Poland — something not quite analogous, but something that I thought was really interesting in Hungary was what they called “Tisza Islands.” And Tisza, again, forgive my pronunciation, is the name of Magyar’s party. It’s named after this Hungarian river. And there would be these islands in small towns, of just people who would meet and organize and kind of shore each other up, show people that they weren’t alone in their opposition. And I think that this was very important — that kind of local infrastructure.

The other thing I just want to say about the future of the Republican Party: I mean, my guess is that the future of the Republican Party is more nakedly antisemitic. And I say this as someone — I think it’s always important to say this when you talk about criticism of Israel — I would like to see the United States foreign policy break with Israel, I would like to see Benjamin Netanyahu in The Hague. This is not about thinking that criticism of Israel is antisemitic.

However, I do think that there is now a lot of naked antisemitism in the Republican Party. After World War I, in Germany there was the stab-in-the-back theory, the Dolchstosslegende, the idea that it was the Jews that had caused them to be defeated. I think you’ll see something similar with MAGA. Especially because this war in Iran was so inexplicable, and nobody could quite understand why Trump just turned on a dime. And there’s going to be an obvious explanatory conspiracy theory. And so, I would be very worried that we will look back on this period as the precursor to an even more fascist Republican Party.

Cottle: One of the things that I’m assuming is that the recovery of the Republican Party — and I do mean recovering from this Trumpish fever — is going to depend on how thoroughly discredited Trumpism is, and I think the Iran war is an important point in that. 

And so, I feel that we should also point out that, in addition to his field trip to Hungary, the vice president was sent to Pakistan to lead the highest level talks between the U.S. and Iran in nearly 50 years; to ostensibly try and reach a deal, even though that seemed very unlikely. And it just struck me — Vance is completely opposed to this war. He stands by the president in public, but this is a violation of the part of the MAGA base that he has always vibed with.

And it seems like this is putting a nail, so to speak, in the coffin of his future within the movement. Now, obviously there’s still a lot of time, there’s overstating, anything can happen. But it does feel like that’s an important schism that’s going to speak to how discredited the movement winds up, and how quickly the party can recover. Or maybe I’m just being too optimistic.

French: Look, political eras do end, parties do reform, so when it comes to when will this era end, I feel confident it will at some point. I just don’t know when and how much damage will be done before it does. And that’s very much an open question. And I do think in JD Vance’s failures, we’re beginning to see maybe how this political era ends. Because the question has always been: Who is getting the baton from Donald Trump? Who is the next standard bearer?

And for a long time it’s been JD Vance. JD Vance is sort of the heir apparent, and he has been faceplanting time and time and time again.

And one way to think of his phase as a leader of the Republican Party is that he’s got all of the toxicity of Trump and none of that real charisma that Trump has. It’s charisma that I don’t fully understand. It’s never landed with me. Although I will say, early on I did enjoy “The Apprentice.” But it has never really landed with me, this hold, this charisma that he has. But one thing I know is that JD Vance does not have it. He just doesn’t have it.

Cottle: No, the man can’t order a donut without alienating people.

French: Right. To the point where we saw this poll — and I never thought we’d see this, that Dick Cheney is now much more popular than JD Vance.

Cottle: It feels like they keep throwing him under the bus. Vance had barely made it back to the U.S. from his globetrotting, when his boss picked a fight with Pope Leo XIV.

Goldberg: Well, can we just remember why we have Pope Leo? What happened to the last pope after JD Vance met with him?

Cottle: Oh, I like that conspiracy theory. We’re floating back to that.

French: Michelle.

Cottle: OK, moving along from Michelle’s dark view of JD Vance’s supernatural powers —

Goldberg: I’m sorry. That was a joke, sorry.

Cottle: Vance is the highest-ranking Catholic in U.S. politics, and his basic response was that the pope should stay out of it. This feud with the pope has not played well among a lot of conservative Catholics. Pope Leo is not as unpopular with conservative Catholics as his predecessor. A lot of them are very pleased with him. David, what’s going on? What’s going on here? What’s the pope up to? What do you make of Vance’s response?

French: Boy. This is fascinating, because MAGA will say: “Well, this pope is going after Donald Trump.” Well, I’m old enough to remember when John Paul II, who was — you know, conservatives love John Paul II — very much against the Iraq war in 2003. So, it is not the case that popes “stay in their lane,” or however you want to say it. Popes have been talking about war and peace forever. It’s what they do.

This is something that’s been going on for a long time, and a role that the church should play. Going back to Martin Luther King Jr., and I’m paraphrasing this quote, but, in essence, the church is not the master of the state, the church is not the servant of the state, the church is the conscience of the state. And so, it’s not that the church runs the country — or the church serves the country — it’s that it has an entirely separate meaning and purpose and relationship to a country. And that is to provide a moral argument about what a country is. And now, of course, that’s not the sum total job of the church, but in the church-state relations context. So, the pope is doing exactly what popes have done. What popes, in my view, should do. But Trump is stumped by people who do not bend to his bullying and to his will. And so, it was only a matter of time before he was going to do this. I felt this has been inevitable for a while, that there was going to be a direct attack on the pope and that it was not going to phase the pope. The pope was not going to be intimidated by that, because they’re two very different people with ——

Cottle: Because why should he be?

French: Right. They’re working on two very different institutions, two very different time horizons. It’s so absurd, this attack on the pope. And Trump is giving his own people off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp.

Goldberg: David, can I ask you a question? Because I think you can’t talk about this fight with the pope without also talking about that extremely blasphemous image of Donald Trump as a “doctor.”

Cottle: Oh, the Jesus image!

French: Yeah. You mean the doctor image? The “doctor.”

Cottle: My doctor looks just like that.

Goldberg: Right. But yes. Of Donald Trump ——

Cottle: Light coming out of hands.

Goldberg: Of a Christ-like Donald Trump healing someone, with both patriotic paraphernalia but also a demon figure in the background. But I’m curious, because I saw people who had supported Trump suddenly saying, “Wait, he is the Antichrist.” A lot of, I think, evangelicals who are still very much on board with Trump — I’m curious, is this just a thing they can dismiss as Trump being Trump, or is this causing some genuine qualms?

French: Let me put it this way: It has, in a small slice of people, caused genuine qualms. It’s a chip-away moment, but it’s more than that. This is wider-scale frustration from people whom I’ve never seen critique Trump. In other words, people who have been with him, who have always had the most rationalizing, justifying explanation. And this was a bridge too far. And the way they’ve cast it is, “Well, I can disagree with him on some things,” or “He just made a mistake.” Very similar to — remember when he put out the video that had the monkey image? There was some consternation and then it was, “Oh, he made a mistake.” And here you’re seeing more consternation, but less willingness to say, “Oh, he just made a mistake.”

Cottle: Man, I’m a lapsed evangelical. And even I was like, “Damn, brother, I don’t believe I’d have done that.”

French: Well, I could tell you’re a lapsed evangelical, Michelle, when your response was: “Damn, brother.”

Cottle: I’m just saying. OK, so I feel that this was a pretty magical move on his part. And I would like us to leave it there. Just with that image of Trump as Jesus, looming over all of us. It seems like a pretty good spot to leave this and pivot to something more uplifting, dare I say?

I want to wrap this thing up as we always do, with recommendations. What are y’all watching or reading, or otherwise enjoying this week? Michelle, you go first. Guest goes first.

Goldberg: So I’m going to recommend a novel. It actually came out a couple of months ago. But I don’t think it’s gotten as much attention as it deserves. It’s a novel called “Good People” by Patmeena Sabit. Have either of you heard of it?

French: No.

Goldberg: OK, so good. So, that shows me that it has not indeed gotten the attention that it deserves.

Cottle: Teach us!

Goldberg: It’s this really wonderful and riveting novel about a very assimilated Afghan family, where the daughter dies and there’s a question of whether or not she was the victim of an honor killing. It has the pace and momentum of a murder mystery, but it’s one of these novels written with many different voices, and it has this polyphonic quality. It is such a fascinating book about both assimilation and the limits of assimilation. This fear of losing face is not one that I typically can sympathize with, but it makes you feel the weight of that. And it also is constantly making you revise what you think is happening.

Like, at one moment you’ll think, “Oh, this really is this abusive, medieval family.” And then you’ll think, “Wait, how different is this really from strict parents grounding their daughter?” It’s so moving, but also just really riveting. It was one of those books that ruins your next day because you’re up late reading it.

Cottle: OK, David?

French: So, I’m cheating a little bit here because I know what you’re going to say, Michelle. And I’m counter-programming you just right off the bat. So, whatever Michelle is about to tell you, don’t listen to her. Watch this instead. Season 2 of “Your Friends & Neighbors” just came out. This is the Jon Hamm show, with Olivia Munn and Amanda Peet, and now this season, with James Marsden, who’s just tremendous. And it’s about a rich guy who steals nice things from rich people, is a good way of putting it.

He falls on hard times, loses his hedge fund job, and decides to make ends meet by stealing all the extra stuff that his neighbors, in this extremely exclusive suburban, New York neighborhood, have. And it’s funny, it’s lighthearted, it’s got elements of mystery to it, and it is just a nice palate cleanser after the trauma of Michelle’s recommendation.

Cottle: I feel targeted and yet I’m going to plow forward anyway and recommend “DTF St. Louis.” It’s on, I believe, HBO, right?

Goldberg: It’s HBO, yeah.

Cottle: It’s got Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini, with — in other, smaller roles — people like Richard Jenkins. It basically starts out with, you have a dead body. Somebody’s dead, and then you’re going to go back through what happened. And it’s sort of a love triangle about three bored, lonely, middle-aged people. But, pretty quickly, it just gets weird. And then it gets weird again. And it’s a limited series, it’s not going to have a second season, praise the Lord. Because I hate it when they do that.

Goldberg: Well, maybe it’ll be one of those anthology ones, where they do “DTF Baltimore” or something.

Cottle: Oh! There we go. David did not like the ending. Michelle has not seen it.

Goldberg: Right. I’ve seen three episodes, and so far I thought it was riveting.

French: It’ll suck you in. It’ll pull you in.

Cottle: The performances are unbelievable. I am just riveted. I can’t look away. So, fine, David: The ending is not to your liking. I get it, but the show — and it’s not a huge commitment, it doesn’t have that many episodes. Do it. Do yourself a favor.

French: And then, as part of your therapy, you can turn to “Your Friends & Neighbors.”

Cottle: OK, with that we’re going to land this plane. Michelle, David — thank you so much for coming to solve the world’s problems. We will do it again soon.

Goldberg: Thank you.

French: Thank you, Michelle.

Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Attila Kisbenedek

Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.

This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Daniel Ramirez. Video editing by Julian Hackney. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Pat McCusker and Sonia Herrero. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.

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Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle

Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment.“