In a passionate New York Times opinion piece, Former Ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, wrote that watching Donald Trump gives him flashbacks to his old job where he watched autocratic strongman Viktor Orban rise to power.
But he reserved his real vitriol not for Trump, but for the "elites" that he saw in both countries standing on the sidelines and failing to act.
Pressman drew parallels between the tactics of Trump and Orban before asking, "Does the way Americans are responding feel familiar, too?"
This is important, Pressman wrote, because "the real danger of a strongman isn’t his tactics; it’s how others, especially those with power, justify their acquiescence."
Although some would attempt to protest Orban's policies, "those with power remained reliably, pliably silent," Pressman wrote. It's a pattern he maintained is repeating itself right before his eyes.
"Here, too, powerful people are responding to authoritarian advances just as their Hungarian counterparts have — not with defiance, but with capitulation, convinced that they can maintain their independence and stay above the fray."
Pressman added that he watched as local Hungarian officials kidded themselves into thinking that appeasing Orban was the right move, "even as he effectively stripped them of their revenues and authority."
Judges and business people made their own deals with Orban: "peace with the strongman, in exchange for subjugation and humiliation. Going along is what did them in," Pressman wrote.
"The lesson of Hungary is this: We cannot claim to care about democracy only when it costs nothing. President Trump, like Mr. Orban, no doubt believes that everyone can be bought. America’s elites are proving him right," Pressman wrote.
"Believing you can outfox a fox is how you become its prey," he argued. With Trump, "American elites, confident in their cleverness, have welcomed a fox into the henhouse."