With Hungary’s parliamentary elections just days away, Donald Trump and his administration are leaving no stone unturned in their attempts to prop up the flagging fortunes of their favorite two-bit autocrat, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Vice President JD Vance went all the way to Hungary this week to rally on Orbán’s behalf, while the president last night posted a long, glowing endorsement on Truth Social.
Nevertheless, the polling shows Orbán’s Fidesz party trailing its main opposition, Tisza, 49 percent to 39 percent. Apparently America isn’t the only nation where MAGA-style right-wing authoritarianism is getting a little stale. Happy Friday.
by William Kristol
In Act 1, scene 2, of The Tempest, Prospero, the once and future Duke of Milan, tells his daughter Miranda how years before traitors tried to do him in:
they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared
A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it.
Shakespeare knew that rats instinctively leave a sinking ship. Yesterday, Melania Trump made her move to quit the rotten carcass of her husband’s presidency.
Standing behind a podium bearing the presidential seal, speaking at the White House Cross Hall where so many presidents have addressed weighty matters of state, and where her husband last week spoke to the nation about Iran, the first lady read a six-minute statement about her and Jeffrey Epstein.
Melania’s focus was on . . . Melania. She began, “The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.” Her purpose, she said, was to defend “my reputation,” to clear “my good name.” (Emphasis mine.)
And so she asserted that “I have never been friends with Epstein” and that “I . . . was never on Epstein’s plane.” She also claimed that “My email reply to [Epstein’s imprisoned accomplice Gislaine] Maxwell cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence. My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trivial note.”
Left unsaid, but not unimplied, was that none of these claims could be made about her husband. He was a pal of Epstein’s. He was on Epstein’s plane. His relationship with Epstein, as exemplified for example in his contribution to Epstein’s birthday book, was more than “casual” or “trivial.”
Melania also chose to express concern for Epstein’s victims, something her husband has conspicuously not done.
And she went on to say that
Now is the time for Congress to act. Epstein was not alone. Several prominent male executives resigned from their powerful positions after this matter became widely politicized. Of course, this doesn’t amount to guilt, but we still must work openly and transparently to uncover the truth.
So the Epstein investigation is not, as her husband has asserted, a “hoax.” Nor is it yet time, as her husband has said, to move on. The truth hasn’t yet been uncovered, and we need to uncover it. And if doing so leads more “prominent male executives” to resign, so be it. One wonders: Could Melania have one prominent male chief executive in mind?
Melania chose not to include in her statement any assertion of her husband’s innocence of complicity in the Epstein affair.
Melania is perhaps not a deep thinker, but she’s no fool. Since immigrating to the United States three decades ago, Melania Knauss has done well for herself. She’s shown that she has a shrewd sense of how to operate in her adopted country. She’s risen to the top, while mostly avoiding being directly engulfed in all the scandals that have raged around her.
And now she seems to think that the man to whom she hitched herself may be going down. She’s trying to arrange not to go down with him.
She presumably doesn’t think her husband can be induced to become one of those “prominent male executives” who resigns from his powerful position. But she knows that he can be removed from it. Isn’t Melania signaling others in the Trump administration and her husband’s supporters in Congress that it’s time to abandon ship, that it’s time to remove him from office?
It should not have taken Melania Trump, acting in her own self-interest, to spur this action. Others should have come to this conclusion based on a judgment of what’s necessary for the well-being of the nation. But one welcomes any helping hand in our current drama. After all, if
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
and if Donald Trump leaves the public stage sooner rather than later, then I stand ready to applaud Melania Trump for her role in ushering Donald Trump to the exit.
by Benjamin Parker
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked how her boss, the president, could claim the moral high ground against the Iranian regime while also threatening genocide and the end of an entire civilization. Her answer wasn’t convincing. It consisted of asserting that Trump did have the high ground (classic begging the question) and summarizing the evils and abuses of the Islamic Republic.
That last point is worth dwelling on. What has Trump done to mitigate those evils and abuses? Is the Iranian regime any closer to collapsing than it was before Trump’s war?
Let’s review the timeline. At the beginning of the year, the regime looked genuinely weak. Its economy was faltering, its nuclear program was in rubble, and its regional proxies were severely diminished. It was rocked by the largest protests in its history, in which more segments of society participated than ever before.
Then Trump promised that “help” was “on the way.” And within days, the regime had slaughtered some 30,000 protesters and the demonstrations stopped. No help had come.
Weeks later, Trump invited Iranians to rise up and take back their country. But his ill-conceived bombing campaign has only strengthened the regime. The United States has been exposed as an impotent and impatient power. The Strait of Hormuz has given Iran an immensely valuable strategic deterrent. The entire region will have to accept the fact that not even the combined power of the United States and Israel could dislodge the theocracy. The Islamic Republic’s governing structure has proved adaptable and durable even under extreme stress. The IRGC is charging tolls for the passage of oil through the strait. The Trump administration has given its tacit permission for the regime to resume enriching uranium. Trump may agree to Iranian demands to lift all sanctions.
Leavitt was asked another question on Wednesday—whether the regime change President Trump has insisted has actually taken place during the course of this war has “led to more freedoms for the Iranian people?”
Her answer was less than inspiring. “I think that’s a question that’s being asked a little bit too early,” she replied. “And we hope that is the case, but it’s something that has yet to be seen.”
In short, the Iranian people were as close as they’d come since 1979 to overthrowing their torturers and oppressors. Then Trump got involved.
Programming note: Our next Bulwark Founders Town Hall will be April 13. Upgrade to a Founders Membership today to join JVL and Sarah for this exclusive virtual town hall. And don’t forget to tell us what’s on your mind or what you’d like to know more about in the comments.
How Political Obsession Turned a Novelist Boring… Once a witty, perceptive writer, Lionel Shriver now produces books that are painful, predictable polemics, writes CATHY YOUNG.
Melania Breaks from White House, Calls for Public Epstein Hearings… On Bulwark Takes, ANDREW EGGER and WILL SOMMER break down Melania Trump’s bizarre and unexpected White House statement on Jeffrey Epstein.
Did the Pentagon Just Threaten the Vatican? ED CONDON joins JVL on Bulwark Takes to talk about the escalating clash between the Vatican and the Trump administration after Pope Leo’s comments on the Iran war.
Hungary’s Surreal, Post-Reality Campaign… On the flagship pod, ANNE APPLEBAUM joins TIM MILLER to discuss the serious electoral challenge facing Putin Puppet Viktor Orbán in Sunday’s Hungarian elections, and America’s embarrassing attempts to bolster him with fake propaganda.
Gen Z Is Ready for Hope and Change… The youngest cohort of voters is ‘hopemaxxing’ politics, argues RACHEL JANFAZA.
DISLOYAL ORDER OF PODCAST BROS: Yesterday, while Melania Trump was busy mysteriously resurrecting the Epstein affair, her husband was opening up a different unexpected battle: war on the MAGA podcasters who have grown hostile to him over his war in Iran. In a jumbo-sized 500 word Truth Social post yesterday, Trump denounced Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones1, fuming at their “Low IQs” for thinking “it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon.” The president uncorked grievance after grievance: None of these podcasters, he said, were “even invited on TV because nobody cares about them.” Tucker was “a broken man,” Candace was “crazy” for accusing the “Highly Respected First Lady of France” of being transgender2, and Alex Jones had rightfully lost “his entire fortune” over accusing the Sandy Hook shooting victims of perpetrating a hoax.3 After about 400 words of this, Trump claimed that “I no longer care about this stuff.”4
The MAGA base, at least early on, largely supported Trump’s war against Iran. But he’s bleeding more of his own media support than ever before, and it appears he’s starting to realize it.
OLD MAN YELLS AT STRAIT: How’s that ceasefire going in Iran? A string of three quick Truth Social posts from last evening tells the story. At 5:08 p.m., the president finally acknowledged that Iran has not actually reopened the Strait of Hormuz: “There are reports that Iran is charging fees to tankers going through the Hormuz Strait—They better not be and, if they are, they better stop now!”
Twenty minutes later, however, Trump was back to fuming at the media for daring to suggest Iran hadn’t totally submitted yet. “The Wall Street Journal, one of the worst and most inaccurate ‘Editorial Boards’ in the World,5 stated that I ‘declared premature victory in Iran,’” Trump wrote. “Actually, it is a Victory, and there’s nothing ‘premature’ about it!” Trump insisted that “very quickly, you’ll see Oil start flowing, with or without the help of Iran.”
Then, one hour later: “Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing Oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz. That is not the agreement we have!” Keep it up, brother—we’re sure this empty threat is the one that’ll finally do the trick.
