Trump Thwarted, Orban Toppled: The New Roadmap for Democrats

Summary

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Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, Justice, and the Courts

Episode Title: Trump Thwarted, Orban Toppled: The New Roadmap for Democrats
Date: April 18, 2026
Host: Dahlia Lithwick
Guest: Ambassador Norm Eisen

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Overview

This episode explores lessons for American democracy from the recent political upheaval in Hungary, where Viktor Orban’s seemingly invincible illiberal regime was toppled through massive turnout and pro-democracy coalition-building. Host Dahlia Lithwick and Ambassador Norm Eisen (Democracy Defenders Fund, former US Ambassador to the Czech Republic) discuss what Hungary’s shocking reversal teaches Democratic strategists, activists, and lawyers in the battle against Trumpism and creeping autocracy in the US. The conversation includes pragmatic approaches to fighting corruption, messaging democratic values, court reform, coalition tactics, and building a blueprint for repair and resilience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Autocracy, Vulnerability, and Pushback

• Hungary as Cautionary Example and Hopeful Blueprint

  • Orban's regime exemplified the “playbook” for constitutional and institutional capture (courts, press, academy, constitution, etc.).
    • "[Orban] had taken control of so many of the levers of democracy... that his illiberal regime appeared bulletproof and permanent." — Lithwick (02:00)
  • Orban’s abrupt defeat, amid record turnout, proves that authoritarian projects—even those deeply entrenched—are not invincible.
    • "Even Orban’s seemingly iron grip... was ephemeral." — Lithwick (02:57)

• The US Under Trump: Competing Narratives

  • Eisen presents two frames:
    • Decline narrative: "Weakness... devastation, destruction and death that Donald Trump and his MAGA enablers... have succeeded in bringing to heel..." (07:10)
    • Pushback narrative: “Pro-democracy pushback... has happened here in just 15 months." (08:16)
  • Despite damage, American institutions (courts, universities, agencies, media, military, protesters) have mounted significant resistance.

• “Wizardry” and the Limits of Authoritarian Power

  • Eisen: US authoritarians were "political wizards the same way that Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice... creates chaos." (06:38)
  • Even in rigged systems, overwhelming turnout can “make it impossible to cheat.” (13:12)

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2. The Mechanics of Democratic Restoration: Lessons from Hungary

A. Coalition-Building & Messaging

• Big Tent Contracts

  • Winning and maintaining a broad, durable pro-democracy coalition is essential.
    • "Maintain your supermajority big tent and use it as a contract process..." — Eisen (14:33)
  • Magyar (the Hungarian opposition leader) unified right, left, and center around basic promises: restoring democracy, lowering corruption, combating cost of living.
  • “People don’t want to hear about Locke and Burke... they want a better life.” — Eisen (15:00)
  • The coalition prioritized practical issues—corruption and cost of living—over ideological purity.

• Simple, Relatable Messaging

  • Emphasized "cost of living" and "anti-corruption" over abstract terms like “democracy.”
    • “You don’t even have to say the D word... Democracy is too abstract.” — Eisen (31:31)
    • “No flour, no Torah... Without being able to afford the cost of living, you can’t pursue the American dream.” — Eisen (32:27)

• Accountability and Truth & Reconciliation

  • Importance of accountability for major offenders, but also the need for national reconciliation to prevent “Hatfield and McCoy” perpetual feuding. (34:17–36:36)

B. Institutional Repair Checklist (Eisen’s “Pull-Down Menu”)

• Top Priorities:
  1. Coalition Compact ("Big Tent"—stick to campaign commitments and maintain wide coalition)
  2. Corruption (prosecute kleptocrats, restore honest government, break the cycle of self-dealing)
  3. Rebuilding Institutions (fix the courts, claw back congressional powers, create robust checks on the presidency)
  4. Free Press (resist media capture, fight oligarchic consolidation—see discussion of Paramount-Warner merger at 38:00)
  5. Elections (protect access, prevent rigging, ensure results can't be overturned)
• "The number one item... maintain your supermajority Big Ten... make a contract, and then you stick to that contract." — Eisen (14:33)
• "You’ve got to deal with all the power centers..." (18:34) — courts, Congress, executive.

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3. Translating Anti-Corruption and Democracy Messaging for the US

• Connecting Corruption and Cost of Living

  • Americans are paying a "corruption tax" through rising costs and self-dealing elites.
  • "There’s a corruption tax that every American is paying..." (28:07)
  • Message for 2026: "If the Democrats are successful in getting power back, they will lower costs... by investigating and stopping the corruption." (28:14)
  • Real examples: Bipartisan AGs stopping Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger (28:25).

• Democracy Messaging

  • Don’t use “democracy” as abstraction. Frame around everyday impact—e.g., pursuit of happiness, affordable life (31:31).
  • Need simple, concrete policy pledges, not telephone-book blueprints (49:39).

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4. Project 2025, Blueprinting, and Institutional Countermeasures

• Project 2025 and Its Mirror

  • Project 2025 (the hypothetical MAGA admin’s detailed playbook): Ultimately a liability for Trump, as much was illegal and telegraphed resistance. (43:01)
  • Pro-democracy blueprint: Keep it simple—big tent, cost-of-living, anti-corruption, court reform, common-sense immigration and crime policy (44:46–46:31).

• Court Reform as Cornerstone

  • Restore integrity, implement term limits, rebalance power; key to lasting democratic repair.
    • "The conversation about Supreme Court reform has to be a cornerstone..." — Lithwick (50:33)
    • "I am on record in favor of a pretty aggressive form of term limits..." — Eisen (51:17)
    • The coalition must stand behind it (“big tent” essential for success).

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5. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Overcoming a Rigged System
  • "The solution is to win by margins that are too big to cheat on." — Eisen (13:12)
• On Constructing a Blueprint for Repair
  • "Pick your issues. Keep it simple. Fucking deliver and tell the people you’ve delivered." — Eisen (46:44)
• On Messaging to Voters
  • "You don’t even have to say the D word... Democracy is too abstract." — Eisen (31:31)
• On Optimism and Action
  • "Optimism isn’t a feeling, it is a way of self-reinforcing democracy every day." — Lithwick (59:14)
• On Courts as Guardrails
  • "Ultimately, you are going to need to build towards constitutional reform… there’s things like term limits, rotating people out on the Supreme Court, rebalancing." — Eisen (52:59)

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6. Protecting Elections: The Foundational Pillar

• Polish Lesson: Rule of Law, Elections, Anti-Corruption
  • Eisen shares what a Polish activist told him:
    1. Protect the rule of law—it's a shield and a guardrail.
    2. Protect elections—mass turnout is the only ultimate defense.
    3. Cut corruption—starve autocrats of resources. (55:55)
  • "If we achieve similar historic turnout levels, it will be a big pro-democracy super majority in November..." — Eisen (58:07)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Topic | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------|--------------------| | US & Hungary: Autocracy vs. Pushback | 03:00–11:25 | | Big Tent Coalition Lessons | 14:33–18:32 | | Pull-Down Menu for Democratic Repair | 14:32–19:06 | | Corruption, Cost of Living, and US Messaging | 23:52–32:51 | | Accountability and Truth & Reconciliation | 33:04–37:53 | | Paramount/Warner Merger & Media Capture | 38:00–42:00 | | Project 2025 and Counter-Blueprinting | 43:01–46:56 | | Supreme Court Reform and Institutional Repair | 49:27–54:25 | | Elections, Rule of Law, and Anti-Corruption | 55:15–58:22 |

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Final Takeaways

• Democratic breakdown and restoration are both possible—even in the most captured, illiberal systems, massive, pragmatic coalitions can achieve stunning reversals.
• The American analogy is close, but depends on relentless activism, simple and relevant messaging (costs and corruption), legal and institutional repair (court reform, congressional power, etc.), and most of all, overwhelming voter turnout.
• Norm Eisen’s optimism is both infectious and strategic: “Be of good cheer... if we achieve similar historic turnout levels, it will be a big pro democracy supermajority in November.” (57:00–58:07)
• Hungary’s victory can be America’s, but only if “we deliver and tell people we’ve delivered.”

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For more: Listen, subscribe, or read at slate.com/amicusplus

Transcript

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[Norm Eisen]

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[Dalia Lithwick]

This is Amicus Slate's podcast about the courts and the law and the Supreme Court. I'm Dalia Lithwig.

[Norm Eisen]

Mr. President, you are on with about 5,000 Hungarian patriots, and I think they love you even more than they love Viktor Orban. Well, I can't believe that. I can't believe that because I love Hungary and I love. I love that Victor. I'll tell you, he's a fantastic man. We've had a tremendous relationship. The pro democracy pushback, the same surge that took so many years in Hungary has happened here in just 15 months.

[Dalia Lithwick]

The American rights favorite, comparative roadmap to autocracy has suffered a near fatal blow at the ballot box for flipping from a stark warning to those of us who care about democracy to a shining example. As recently as last week, the conventional wisdom for aspiring autocrats was be an Orban, not a Trump. In Hungary, Viktor Orban, who had been in office for almost two decades, had taken control of so many of the levers of democracy, the courts, the academy, the press, the arts, the Constitution itself that his illiberal regime appeared bulletproof and permanent. As our friend Ian Bassin at Protect Democracy reminded us two weeks ago on this show, Donald Trump could not yet make similar claims. Sure, there's been a lot of obeying in advance and taking the deal, especially in the corporate media and the academy. But Trump is being thwarted by trial courts, by universities, independent reporters, military officials, and protesters every single day. Well, this past weekend, we learned that even Orban's seemingly iron grip on the levers of democracy was ephemeral. He was routed amid record turnout in the recent election and routed to such an extent a supermajority as to make

[Norm Eisen]

it legislatively and constitutionally possible to claw

[Dalia Lithwick]

back what's been stolen from the machinery of democracy in Hungary. My guest today, Ambassador Norm Eisen, is here to teach us what just such a process could look like in the United States. Now, before we get to Norm and his concentrated shot of optimism for court reform and coalitions and combating corruption here in the US I want to flag that right after this episode. Slate plus members will have access to my weekly bonus. Back and forth with my Amicus co host Mark Joseph Stern, we're discussing how and why several Supreme Court justices spring speaking engagements have turned into an airing of interpersonal grievances and what it signals

[Norm Eisen]

about some of the big decisions that

[Dalia Lithwick]

we are still waiting on from 1 First Street.

[Mark Joseph Stern]

I think our deep fear from the start here was that she's mostly pissed off about Calais.

[Norm Eisen]

Right.

[Mark Joseph Stern]

Our deep fear has been that the blockbuster case of the term, there are many, but the biggest one, the attack on the Voting Rights act, is gonna turn out as bad as we all think and that she is furious at Kavanaugh and is taking it out on him in public. And like, if that's what happened here, then all the facts kind of line up.

[Dalia Lithwick]

Go to slate.com amicusplus so you can join us for that. Okay. Time for this, Eeyore, to hear from the most tiggerish of advocates for democracy about what we need to learn from hung in the law and in our politics. Norm Eisen served as the US ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014.

[Norm Eisen]

Among his many other hats that he wears and titles he has, he is, for our purposes, the co founder and executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund, which has been helping lead the successful national

[Dalia Lithwick]

court fights against the Trump administration.

[Norm Eisen]

Norm is also the co founder and

[Dalia Lithwick]

publisher of the Indispensable the Contrarian.

[Norm Eisen]

He's also one of my go tos, always on both authoritarian creep and the tactics of a successful resistance. So, Norm, oh boy, did I need you this week. Welcome back.

Thank you, Dalia. It's always such a pleasure to be with you. And of course, what better place to celebrate the resurgence of democracy against a seemingly impregnable authoritarian and to contemplate its larger implications together? Thanks for having me.

I want to talk about the fragility of democracy because I would love for your sort of 40,000 foot diagnosis of what happened in the United States. This was a democracy with challenges. It's a very old democracy, but this was supposed to be a robust democracy, had competing branches of governments, had checks and balances, functional court, free media, thriving academy. All of this seems to have been taken over by the forces of illiberalism inside, I want to say inside a decade, maybe we can fight about that. Maybe inside a decade and a half. And I guess I really sort of first principles asking the question, was this a poison pill that is just baked into US democracy or into all democracies? Or were Trump and maga. I'm smirking while I say this, norm. Some kind of political wizards who managed to turn a functioning democracy into a second rate protection racket in the blink of an eye.

Yeah, they're political wizards the same way that Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment of Fantasia uses the magical powers and creates total chaos and the broom that he animates attacks him.

You know, this is the wizard gang that can't shoot straight. Look, in trying to take account of

what has happened in the past 15 months in the United States, there are two competing narratives.

And weirdly, events across the ocean cast

one of those narratives, I think, into brighter light. There's one story of the past 15 months that is an account of the weakness of American democracy and the devastation, destruction and death that Donald Trump and his MAGA enablers, his cronies, and in the executive branch, in Congress, in the oligarchy, have succeeded in bringing to heel the Once mighty Article 1 Congress have become the majority lap dogs for Trump, allowing him to run amok. This is a view of the world where Trump's kneecapping of the independent agencies, which the Supreme Court is about to authorize with Humphrey's executor. It's a view of autocratic rise, law firms, media giants, abc, cbs, genuflecting.

But there's another view of the world. And it's the view of the world that I subscribe to Dalia and at Democracy Defenders Fund with our about 300 legal cases and matters, including many of the landmark wins of those 15 months. And that is that the democratic, the pro democracy pushback, the same surge that took so many years in Hungary has happened here in just 15 months. And many of them, as I say,

are cases we've worked on.

That is an account of Donald Trump

losing again and again in the courts and being forced.

I represent the city of Los Angeles and all the National Guardians Litigation. And they sent me the video of the National Guard. My wonderful client, Heidi, the city attorney, sent me the video of the National Guard slinking out in the middle of the night after one of our court wins. I was at the Supreme Court with the other independent agency, the Fed. I was there to see how even the most hostile members of the Supreme Court bench are not going to kneecap the Fed. That's the story of Tish James and Jim Comey. Trump trying to criminally prosecute people where we were very proud to develop the theory at Democracy Defenders Fund that Trump's phony, crony U.S. attorneys are illegal.

We started with Alina Haba.

We filed briefs for 200 bipartisan judges.

Talia.

In those James and Comey cases, they were thrown out. That's the story of Trump's attempt to take over our elections. He did an election eo to take over American elections a year ago. We went to court and blocked it. He tried to do redistricting. We represented those Texas legislators who sounded the ALARM. We defended Prop 50, the antidote in California, creating new seats to block Trump, and on and on and on, exposing his corruption. Now we're fighting the biggest oligarch takeover, the Paramount Warners merger.

We're deep into that. We helped put together this pledge of support for the AGs from 3,000 Hollywood heavyweights.

My preferred account is a combination of the two. My greatest anxiety today, I'm anxious about continuing the pushback.

The next 300 cases, the election wars we're gonna have here this year. I think we'll win. But you know, I'm anxious about it. I'm anxious about after we have that breakthrough. What does 2027 look like, for example, in the House of Representatives?

My biggest anxiety is the central problem that is confronting Petr Magyar and the Hungarians today. I think, do we go the way of Brazil, which had accountability and sustained the autocratic turnaround, or do we go the way of Poland? Up, down, up, down. That's my biggest long term concern for

the United States and for Hungary.

There is a tendency right now in the sort of post gaming of Hungary to be like, oh, look, it was never actually, you know, authoritarianism in the first place. Like clearly it wasn't that bad if it was so fragile. And I love what you're saying because you're saying like, yes, it was that bad. Yes, this is that bad. And also people can fight back. So it's sort of yes. And, and I think it's a really important framing. It doesn't mean you Sit back and do nothing and hope it implodes. It means people like you are working day after day after day because it

[Dalia Lithwick]

is really threatening, it is really pernicious,

[Norm Eisen]

but also it can be beaten. And I think that's such sort of way to contain the flip.

[Dalia Lithwick]

I guess Orban wasn't really, you know,

[Norm Eisen]

that much of an autocrat.

It does raise an interesting question that I'll ask you.

Dalia and I are good friends, so I'm allowed to cut. Tear up the script. Dalia, if Orban, to your point, if he was such a dictator, how did they have free. Unfair.

They were not free and fair like

we see in the United States, but

they did have free but unfair elections in Hungary.

How did that happen?

I mean, it's actually a question I wanted to ask you because if you look at his gerrymandering record, it's almost inconceivable, right? These were not free and fair ungerrymandered elections. And yet I think it's just. And it goes to that voter turnout point, right? It turns out that even with a huge thumb on the scale against both freedom and fairness, the people can still move the needle. I think that's the answer, right?

I think that's right.

The solution is to win by margins that are too big to cheat on.

That's what Orban calls it, illiberal democracies.

And that is the kind of regime that Donald Trump is trying to impose here.

We will do everything to protect the

2026 elections from sabotage. But we're now about 300 cases and

matters come November, we might have 400, we might have 500, we might have 600. But ultimately it is up to all

of us to turn out in numbers too big to cheat on.

That is the ultimate guardrail.

And even Viktor Orban was not willing

to take on 80% of Hungarians.

This does sort of lead to the

[Dalia Lithwick]

repair piece of this.

[Norm Eisen]

And this is really what I needed you to walk me through, because I do wonder if you have some. I don't know what to even call it, a pull down menu of what are the instrumentalities of democracy? You fix first what is essential. Is it true that the corruption stuff is top of the chain? Is it true that free press has to be done immediately? Or is it just sort of everything everywhere all at once? It all needs to be repaired immediately

[Dalia Lithwick]

and that's what we have to do

[Norm Eisen]

in the United States.

The number one item on the pull down menu. And Magyar is doing all of this. He's very brilliant politician and that was the failure in the Polish presidential election. They didn't have a Petr Magyar to put forward who could do the things I'm about to describe. The number one item in the Polish down menu is to maintain your supermajority Big Ten and to use it as a contract process. You have committed now to people across the political spectrum in Hungary. We're about to make these commitments in the United States. And I'm going to be very loud about this, and it's not going to be popular. When some of my friends listen to this podcast, I can already imagine the kvetches I'm going to get. You make a contract and then you stick to that contract. In Magyar's case, he made a set of promises about what democracy is. Dalia. People don't want to hear about Locke and Burke and John Rawls. The way that democracy hits them is to have a better life. And there's nothing wrong with talking to people about the cost of living crisis. That's not smaller than talking about ethereal democracy ideas.

And that's what Magyar did.

And he did it brilliantly.

And he connected the cost of living with the corruption and his deal with these right, left and center in Hungary. And he was ruthless and rigorous and disciplined in making this commitment. He's like, look, I am going to stop the stealing. They are stealing from you and making everything more expensive. They're just incompetent because they're in their totalitarian power games. They're not getting the real people that's

making things more expensive.

I'm going to bring the cost down. Government services. That includes better government services.

It's what Mom Donnie calls sewer socialism.

And I'm going to reduce the corruption. And it was a very simple message. You've got to deliver on that. You've got to be brutal in hammering that home. Lbj, like, like how he passed the

civil rights laws and the Great Society laws. Politics is not for the faint of heart. And you got to tell the people you did it. The Biden administration did some of the most amazing policy accomplishments since lbj. Nobody knew about it. Not enough people knew about it. And to do that, you have a

populist leader that is maintaining that compact

with the people is everything and needs

to be a big tent. I like to call it in the United States. A to Z. We used to call it Cheney to

Chomsky before Chomsky had his Epstein problems.

A to Z. Abigail Spanberger and Andy Beshear, kind of representing one all the way over to Zoran Mamdani A to Z, Big ten. That's what we need. And that's going to mean, look, I proudly proclaim myself a strong two state justice, fairness, liberal Zionist. Do you know how many Shabbat dinners I had when I was ambassador? I brought together people from Israel and Palestine to talk to each other. We ran a Track 2 process in

Prague that I hosted while I was ambassador.

But people have wildly different views on

Israel, for example, big tent.

There are other issues that are larger that transcend that. And Magyar did that. And he's like, I don't want to talk about that other stuff. We're going to talk about costs and corruption. That's part one. And then the rest of the pull

down menu is you've got to deal with all the power centers. And it's in no particular order.

Article 3.

In the United States, the courts, they

must be cleaned up. They're a mess here.

That's been a project of decades to break our courts. And the Supreme Court has to be unbroken. We can talk about that. Congress has given up its power, has to claw back war powers and more.

And then we have to do more

to constrain Article two. I'll say one last thing. I've gone on way too long.

No phony tolerance for autocracy. Magyar went to see the President of Hungary and Orban Operatic and then he tweeted afterwards, the President must go. He's not fit to lead our country. He must resign. He's not pulling punches.

Maybe we pulled some punches in 2021-2026 that we shouldn't have accountability.

[Dalia Lithwick]

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[Norm Eisen]

Norm, I'm old enough to remember because you've just said the thing that's really important, right? Corruption, corruption, corruption. That was a huge part of the message, right? They are self dealing. They are enriching themselves and their families. Everyone hates that. But I'm old enough to remember you and emoluments the first time around. I remember you and I having conversations where we said the public is not going to stand for this and the public has stood for corruption that now makes emoluments look frankly adorable, right? So I want to hear a little bit more. One more beat on. We've been talking about corruption in Trump and self dealing in Trump and the oligarchs in Trump and the like meme coin and the stuff that is happening now is so profoundly disheartening in terms of corruption and and kind of crickets in the United States on this. So help me understand how to take the anti corruption message that really was metabolized in Hungary and import it to an American public that seems to just be like eh, corruption's okay.

Well I think the corruption narrative did work in 2020. Donald Trump was ousted and we can analyze what went wrong in 2024 to a fare thee well. My view is that a handful, about 150,000 give or take voters in three states, the same three states we always talk about, were aggravated about a series of issues and took a gamble. You know if 150,000 approximately +1 had

changed their vote in those three places, it's not much more than Phil a couple of stadia

demonstrating I'm utterly unfit for leadership in the United States because I didn't say stadiums. My political consultant friends say I'm too coastal elite. A couple stadiums full of people changing their mind about a few each. That's my view. I do not think it was a giant repudiation like in Hungary where they have an electoral magnifier system.

The Electoral College was a disproportionate reflection

of what those about 150,000 voters. I think it was a little less actually in those three places.

So let's not over read 2024 as a referendum authorizing corruption. Trump, after all, said he would drain the swamp. He hasn't. He has.

I saw a poll by one of the long term pollsters that's been polling since before Nixon. Trump is minus 42 in this poll.

He's 1 point lower than Nixon at his lowest point in the middle of his corruption scandal. The crickets are chirping loudly if you listen to them, Dalia, that they don't like the billions that Donald Trump and his family have made over 300 million American Jiminy cricket voters. They don't like the billions Trump has made. They don't like the crony capitalism. No, I'll tell you why we're not

doing doing emoluments again.

We're focusing on other corruption like the Paramount Warner's merger, where instead of the independent review that the feds usually do under both parties, you have an endorsement of preferred oligarchs with Trump making his preference open. Pete Hedge, Seth saying the quiet part out loud. He can't wait for the Ellisons to take over cnn. And Dalia, when you turn the channels, every channel is going to be Fox News. And we're fighting that. That's a corruption battle. So I think we're well situated in the United States to have a simple

message in 2026, not dissimilar to Hungary,

on the cost of living.

There's a crisis because of the betrayal of Trump and his MAGA enablers.

You are paying more. There's a corruption tax that every American is paying and if the Democrats are

successful in getting power back, that they will lower costs, they will make life and the pursuit of happiness affordable by investigating and stopping the corruption.

And they're already doing it. The Democratic and Republican ags stopped Live Nation and Ticketmaster from robbing us all this week. That was a huge victory against corruption.

With Donald Trump having rubber stamped that deal and the feds backed out, the states stepped in. Bipartisan no less.

[Dalia Lithwick]

You've now connected up.

[Norm Eisen]

And I think this actually was ably

[Dalia Lithwick]

done in the Hungarian messaging too, connecting up corruption and cost of living. Right.

[Norm Eisen]

We're not doing well.

[Dalia Lithwick]

And we're not doing well because they're enriching themselves.

[Norm Eisen]

There's a third piece of this.

[Dalia Lithwick]

And again, this hearkens back to conversations

[Norm Eisen]

you and I have had for years now.

Years.

And that is democracy itself getting people to care about democracy. And, you know, folks kept telling us before the 24 election, and you were in those calls with me, that nobody cares about democracy. Nobody cares that democracy is just an abstraction. And that Americans vote on the price of eggs, or as he said, you know, on the price of gas. And that these democracy pieces, we'll talk

[Dalia Lithwick]

about court reform as part of this,

[Norm Eisen]

but electoral college reform, gerrymandering, all of the ways in which democracy needs to be kind of stripped down and fixed up. Americans did not seem to really go to the polls because democracy was under threat. And that was a piece of, it

[Dalia Lithwick]

seems to me, the Hungarian elections.

[Norm Eisen]

So I want you to do the same thing for the democracy conversation you just did for the corruption conversation, which is make it salient and relevant for me why Americans this time around care about the Electoral College and Puerto Rico and statehood and court reform.

When Magyar was talking to the Hungarians about the cost corruption nexus, he was talking about democracy. And I really venerate Joe Biden. I've known him for decades. I worked on one of his presidential campaigns. I've been rattling around. So Dalia kind of gotten to know a lot of people. He's a good man. His concerns about democracy were genuine. But the way to deal with it is not to have abstract conversations, as I say, about ideas from Locke and Burke and John Rawls. It's to talk about the costs of America not functioning the way we promised we would have a more perfect union and the pursuit of happiness for Americans. And instead, what we have is a cost of living crisis and a corruption crisis that is the result of America and our ideas not working properly. You don't even have to say the D word.

We should banish it because it's too abstract. I've learned this the hard way.

I was gonna say since the boss of the democracy Defenders, we should just call it like balloons.

I'm changing the name of our organization to the Cost Affordable. You shouldn't even say affordability. I'm changing it to the Cost of Living in Anti Corruption Club. You know, we have to find a way to translate this when we talk

to average folks, because when we're defending democracy, what we really defending are those ideas of the pursuit of happiness. You can afford happiness. There's a wonderful Yiddish saying. You know, Dalia, English is not my first language, which comes as no surprise to many in Kemachein Torah. No flower, no Torah.

What that essentially means is without being able to afford the cost of living,

you can't pursue the American dream, you can't pursue your values. Torah is a stand in in our Jewish lexicon for living a virtuous life, pursuit of happiness, essentially. So I think we have to find a better way.

Fortunately, my target audience with the democracy defenders understands what I'm talking about when

I say we defend democracy, that's how we defend democracy.

So you're at the very end of

[Dalia Lithwick]

your pull down menu, you said the

[Norm Eisen]

magic word, which is accountability. And then I took us on some

[Dalia Lithwick]

train to some other station.

[Norm Eisen]

But I would love your thoughts on, because you've said, right, Poland, up and down, in and out, you know, sometimes

[Dalia Lithwick]

on, sometimes off, off.

[Norm Eisen]

And we tried accountability. Seems to me last week on the show we talked to Jamie Raskin about impeachment, the need to hold this president to account.

Another one of my adventures. First term emoluments and impeachment.

I remember it well. Talk to the folks who say all of the attempts to bring accountability after 2020 were either ill conceived or created a backlash. Because what I'm hearing in Hungary is, oh, hell no, there will accountability. And that means sweeping investigations and trials and people are going to jail. And there is a sort of stratum of American thought that holds that, like, if we hadn't tried to have accountability after January 6th, Trump wouldn't have been swept back into office. So can you talk about accountability? Because it seems like it's got a bad rap.

Accountability is another one of those words like nobody knows. I don't even like to talk about affordability. I talk about the cost of living crisis, the corruption crisis that's contributing to

the cost of living crisis.

The worst criminals who are stealing from

the American people right now, they're stealing from you and from me and from

330 million others, of course, as we always have.

They have to be brought to justice. We have to get that money back for the American people, people.

But we can't be in an endless

cycle of the hatfields and the McCoys. That's what Donald Trump is doing now.

He wrongly perceives that he was unfairly targeted.

He was fairly targeted, Dalia.

And he's going after. Just this week we got the news

he's going after the Ukraine whistleblower who was the foundation of our impeachment proceedings. There's no basis to have a criminal referral against that individual.

Other countries have phrased it well, truth and reconciliation. Because you have to balance the part

where we're going to get to the truth with we're going to reconcile and we can't survive as a country in a permanent Hatfield and McCoy intergenerational feud.

We have to try to get back

to what Magyar did, which is to

reconcile a big tent, right, left and

center, that agrees on certain things.

And we are working on that.

In the democracy movement. We had a conference, you might have

spoken at our anti authoritarian conference in

the summer of 2024.

We workshopped a set of 10 principles.

You can find it on the Democracy Defenders website.

It's guided the democracy movement these past 15 months. Friends, when I talked to my conservative partners, many of whom are on our board, a Bill Kristol, a Joe Walsh, Barbara Comstock, many others, you know, we have a set of things we agree on and that is an affirmative agenda. So I think we need to have

truth for the worst offenders, but we need to have reconciliation for others. Those defectors are very important part of the movement. You know, who would have thought? Marjorie Taylor Greene. God, it's hard for me to imagine there's room in the big tent for her, but, you know, she has been terrific in calling out the worst of the worst. And Tucker Carlson, he's been platforming anti Semites. And Candace Owens, she's even worse. She peddles anti Semitic conspiracy theories.

But God bless him, when Trump did

his infamous Easter tweet attacking the Iranians or his civilization, his genocide tweet, which in itself is a war crime, even that far right.

Alex Jones, like the worst of the worst, Dalia, he lost his anti Semitic caucus. That's like his base. That's his base. He lost them. So we're seeing some cracks. I'm never gonna make common cause with

Tucker Carlson, Candace, Owen and Alex Jones.

But there is a big tent that we can reconcile. And there's gonna need to be a lot of reconciliation. But the crux who broke the law, the criminals who are out there stealing every day. No, you can't steal from the American people.

Say, oh, 2029, let's kiss and make up. No.

So you've mentioned the Paramount, Skydance, Warner Brothers merger. I think it's sort of playing in

[Dalia Lithwick]

the background for a lot of people. And you're right, I think it's gotten a lot more attention with folks in Hollywood speaking out. Let's listen to our friend Katie Fang. This is her testimony. Senate Democrats held a hearing on it on Wednesday.

[Norm Eisen]

Yes. And let me say before we play, Katie Fang, she was there representing the Democracy Defenders Action where she's a senior advisor or soon to be renamed the

Cost Cutting Corruption Killing Club. Let's take A listen.

[Katie Fang]

I have reported on First Amendment law for years. I have covered the cases, I've interviewed the litigants. I've explained that documents to millions of viewers. And I can tell you that the framers designed the Free Press clause precisely because that they understood that a concentrated power, whether held by a king, a parliament or a corporation acting in coordination with a government poses an existential threat to self governance. What this merger enables is not a hypothetical version of that threat. It's an operational one.

[Norm Eisen]

Tell us why this matters in all the things that you are doing, why

[Dalia Lithwick]

this feels like a touchstone of freedom.

[Norm Eisen]

Here's why it matters. Part of the challenge of having accountability is there's extremely high legal burdens, hurdles to hold the president accountable. They're not insurmountable. We had a court judgment recently from Judge Amit Mehta here in the District of Columbia that Trump was doing political activity in his election lip speech and can be held accountable for some of the wrongdoing around that, but it's very high.

However, the oligarchs who are in there bending their knee and pushing cash to Trump or doing his bidding can be fought in court. And they are his enablers of the

attacks on the First Amendment.

And the Ellison are exhibit A of this. They openly curry favor with him. David Ellison is having a dinner for journalists in his web and Donald Trump here in D.C. i think it's in the days ahead. I mean it's open collusion so you can go after that. The Paramount Warner's merger is an example of this, that this is a misbegotten consolidation. The entertainment studio is going to drive costs through the roof for all of us to have so much control of streaming services of movies in one hand.

Propaganda being pushed on those platforms, but

also the news consolidation. We don't want, as Katie said, we don't want CBA fate to then become

the fate of cnn. You don't want to turn the channel from Fox News to CNN and you get the same content or worse.

So this is something we can stand up to. The AGS just won Live Nation, Ticketmaster. They can go to court to stop this. There's been an explosion, a mutiny on the Hollywood bounty we were proud to help lead at Democracy Defenders Fund.

We worked with movie stars and working

folks in the industry, over 3,000 of the biggest actors, producers, directors, writers, but also folks you've never heard of who run the cameras and do the catering and the makeup. Working people and news people like Katie

Fang and Jim Acosta joining together to say in the name of another Hollywood TV show.

Nobody wants this.

I think that will be challenged and defeated in court.

It is not a done deal for the Ellisons or for democracy. There's that word again.

There's that word we're going to have to call it balloons. So listen, I want you to now set my mind at rest about one other piece of this, which is is MAGA had Project 2025 sealed in amber long before 2025. And it was just a roadmap for the takeover of government, of institutions, of the law, of the family, of civic life. It was the whole thing that was like some pretty asymmetric warfare they had going there, Norm. Like they were ready to go. And as some of us dare to dream of a Hungary style route. We could call it Anti corruption. We could call it Norm's wish List. What is the damn analog of Project 2025? Who's working on it? What's in it? Just make me feel good. Make me feel like there is a blueprint and it's good to go.

Well, let's not get too excited about

Project 2025 because it was a millstone around Trump's neck. He had to disclaim it in the campaign. Then they implemented it and almost everything in there is illegal. And they gave us a blueprint in advance so we could fight back. So if you like Donald Trump being, I think The Nixon was minus 41 and Trump is minus 42.

If you like that, then have another one. I'll give you an example.

Birthright citizenship.

The fact that they said they were going to eliminate birthright citizenship enabled me to start working with the ACLU and others on a birthright citizenship campaign case in summer of 2024. We filed it on day one and we're at the Supreme Court.

I think we're going to win at the Supreme Court.

You know, the key thing I think is simplicity. Like Magyar cost and corruption. The lower cost, lower Corruption Club, the

new name of my organization, Cut Costs cut Corruption Club C5.

So that discourse is happening in plain sight. That's how we got to 300, about 300 legal complaints just go on our website. Hopefully the new pro democracy big tent will be smart enough to follow up. We did a legal complaint on the illegal boat strikes. It's murder on the high seas. Well, somebody should follow up on that. We laid out the law, we laid out the facts. It's there in plain sight. I'll tell you what I think it should look like.

Others have their own view.

All big tent consensus issues, costs, Corruption.

We have to have a reasonable crime policy. My wonderful colleague AG Matt Plotkin, the Vera Institute, they have sound common sense, middle of the road crime policy, the courts. We cannot have this continued kakistocracy. We have to have some court reform, commonsensical, like term limits court reform. And I think we can't have porous borders. And the chaos at the border was a devastating indictment for all the good things the Biden administration did. They cracked down on it. It was too late.

We have to finally do common sense.

Immigration reform again.

What ice?

The crazy ice. Nobody's asking for that in our cities. People don't want the criminals. We do have to get the criminals.

But my dad was an undocumented migrant, Dalia. He jumps ship from Poland at ellis island in 1940. He's like, oh, I'll be back, I just want to walk around New York. And he stayed here for another four decades. You know what I'm saying? Those are simple issues. Issues don't overcomplicate. If you don't like those issues, pick some other issues that we agree on. Run on them. Be simple about them. Be common sense. Unify the country.

Equality.

But it's equality for everybody. Don't present it as special interest.

Bleeding.

Explain that.

We want that pursuit of happiness for every American person.

I think even the most ultra maga

people in their hearts, other than Stephen Miller, or actually live and let live,

they want that too.

My best friend is ultra maga and yet we agree on so much. We disagree on a lot. But he doesn't want deprivation of equality or cruelty to migrants.

Pick your issues. Keep it simple. Fucking deliver and tell the people you've delivered. And that's the recipe for Magyar and

it's the recipe for the United States States.

And we can constitute a new New

deal that can have a decades long run. It's much simpler said than done.

[Dalia Lithwick]

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[Dalia Lithwick]

And we are back talking constitutional and Democratic repair with Norm Eisen. I want to land on the courts,

[Norm Eisen]

but I also just want to note

[Dalia Lithwick]

we've just workshopped the new name of whatever it is that Norm is building.

[Norm Eisen]

You heard it here from first. It's like C4, C5, C7, C3PO.

[Dalia Lithwick]

I love it.

[Norm Eisen]

And I also just want to say you actually said something super important that doesn't get said enough, which is you don't need a telephone book sized project 2025 because we know this and we know how to do it and it's in our kind of DNA and in our bones.

[Dalia Lithwick]

But I want to talk about the court for one second.

[Norm Eisen]

You mentioned it. This is ultimately a show where we talk about the Supreme Court and I think it's really important. We're heading into the last couple of weeks of oral arguments and then the end of the term we're gonna have a raft of hugely consequential decisions that are gonna come in the last week of June and the court's gonna give Trump a couple of losses but a bunch of wins and then we're gonna

[Dalia Lithwick]

get told it's this like really temperate, moderate court.

[Norm Eisen]

And we should keep it exactly as it is so that when Sam Alito allegedly retires, he can be replaced by someone far to his right, if such

[Dalia Lithwick]

a thing is imaginable.

[Norm Eisen]

The thing you started to say, Norm, is so important, which is the conversation about Supreme Court reform has to be a cornerstone of what we say out loud because we have been afraid to say it out loud for a very long time.

Cornerstone.

And it has to be a predicate

that we build up to. So it's not coming out of the blue. And you know, this is one of the places as we reflect back on the lessons of our beloved Joe Biden and the very many good things that that administration did, I can't say that the opportunity to do court reform was a particular although the reform was not particularly dramatic. Now they put a lot of judges on the bench historic.

And we're seeing the positive results of

that in the extraordinary judicial guardrail pushback on Trump where I think there's been kind of a shift in the force, the vibe, you know, with these decisions

now from the Supreme Court that are

going to be very bad for him. People see that the courts have been to some extent a guardrail. I am on record in favoring a pretty aggressive form of term limits. And I've done policy papers. It really tracks some of the Sheldon White House reforms that he's advocated for and attempted to legislate late, where you would have some rotation, where every president would appoint and you'd have some remediation. We have the power to do that. We can back that up with the power of the purse. We can back that up with the jurisdiction reallocation if necessary. It won't be a successful project if the big tent is not behind it. If you can't muster a coalitional background, you know, Magyar is running on the corruption of the courts. He ran on that. He struck a bargain with the Hungarian people and now when he delivers, he has super majority support. Unlike Trump, who you know about 150,000 votes. That's no mandate. And you've seen his floor just collapse because he didn't listen to the constituencies that voted for him. Magyar does have a supermajority. He has enough to change the constitution. But I think he's going to be careful in how he does that to stick to the deal he made with the Hungarian people. Ultimately you are going to need to build, but it'll be a multi year project. You are going to need to build towards constitutional reform in the United states. But in the meantime, there's things like imposing a set of term limits, rotating people out on the Supreme Court rebalancing. I think that's constitutional, as I've argued at length why it's constitutional and the

tools that Congress has to enforce their balance vision. But you gotta run on it, you

gotta explain it to people.

And you know, the court has. There was a lot of anxiety in

the shadow docket days, but now we're seeing a series of decisions already. The City of Chicago National Guard decision, the terrorist decision. I think you will see a series of additional big ticket decisions.

And you know you're gonna get bad decisions in place.

That counts a lot. That's elections. I don't think Voting Rights Act Article 2 is going to survive very much tragically.

But on the plus side, at least

they didn't drop that decision in December when you would have had huge nationwide redistricting.

So, you know, we do have to

talk about as one of those five C's court reform. But I think I'll stick with the names Democracy Defenders Fund and Democracy Defenders Action. We'll just have our five.

Dalia, you have been on a journey of naming today.

[Dalia Lithwick]

It's very biblical.

[Norm Eisen]

I want you to play us out for one second where you started and

[Dalia Lithwick]

where you just ended.

[Norm Eisen]

Where you started with Hungary and where

[Dalia Lithwick]

you just ended, which is the ballot box.

[Norm Eisen]

Because one of the things that Democracy

[Dalia Lithwick]

Defenders has prioritized is protecting elections.

[Norm Eisen]

And I would just love for you to remind people that the vibe that the fix is in, he's going to deny the election.

[Dalia Lithwick]

He's going to send National Guardsmen in to hassle people in their polling places.

[Norm Eisen]

He's collecting data already.

[Dalia Lithwick]

You know, there's no point voting because we're going to lose. My God, if Hungary has put the

[Norm Eisen]

lie to anything, it's the fixes in story, as you said. But can you just play us out with why this is one of the

[Dalia Lithwick]

three pillars that is so important?

[Norm Eisen]

Yes, our three pillars. That Democracy Defenders are based on a conversation I had with a wonderful Polish veteran of the democracy wars in that country, which have been up and down since the Iron Curtain. Solodernos, the Peace, the Law and Justice Party. And then the coalition government coming in and the poor presidential showing poor candidate for the pro Democracy party. And now you have a split government with an autocratic president and a coalition that can't get as much done. Pro democracy democracy coalition.

He said to me, norman, there are a thousand and one things that you can do at Democracy Defenders, but there are Three things that you must do. Number one, you must protect the rule of law because if you don't, it will be used to put you in jail.

I'm paraphrasing.

If you do, it'll be a guardrail. Number two, you must protect elections because guardrails are not enough. You have to break through.

You have to make a democracy u turn. The elections are how you do that. And that's what's going to happen in this country in 26. Be of good cheer.

And number three, you must cut off the corruption because that is how the autocrats create the vicious cycle of fueling

their attacks on rule of law and winning elections. And it worked for Orban for 16 years. It worked for Orban.

So that's all we do.

We do those three things at the Democracy Defenders Fund and action on the elections front.

Be of good cheer, you Dalia Lithwick listeners. We will have a large enough margin

in 26 that the pro democracy forces will triumph.

But there also will be attempts to do those wicked naughty things. We're in court right now cutting them off like the elections. Order. There's just been an elections takeover executive order order. We're in court to stop it and we will. Multiple people are in multiple courts, belt and suspenders. So, you know, I don't care who you vote for. As I say, don't be too disappointed in me.

One of my very best friends from my synagogue, my best synagogue friend is ultra Maga.

And you know, we find a lot of other things to agree on and we find a lot of things to disagree on, but he's a decent, lovely, beautiful person, person. Whoever you vote for, vote. And if we do that, if we achieve similar historic turnout levels, it will be a big pro democracy super majority

in November in the United States and

it will lay the foundation for the democratic renaissance, the reconstruction, the unfinished reconstruction and the return and resurgence.

All the R words.

If you vote and vote early and vote by mail and maybe you'll have me back, Dalia, to talk about with

your listeners exactly how Trump is going to try to subvert that and how we and others in our coalition will defeat him.

[Dalia Lithwick]

It's a date.

[Norm Eisen]

Norm Eisen served as the US ambassador

[Dalia Lithwick]

to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014.

[Norm Eisen]

He is co founder and executive chair of the soon to be renamed but probably not but possibly Democracy Defenders Fund, which has been helping lead the and Action and Action Fund, which has been helping lead the successful national court fights against the Trump administration. He is also the co founder and the publisher of the contrarian. I really hope you are all reading it. And Norm, you always remind me that optimism isn't a feeling, it is a way of self reinforcing democracy every day. And holy honey, I really needed you to remind me. Remind me that that which happened in Hungary is eminently doable here, but it requires not just action but optimism and I thank you for that every day. Thanks Norm.

Thanks Dalia.

[Dalia Lithwick]

That's all for this episode of Amicus. But wait, there's more Amicus plus Members. Let's head on over to the Amicus plus Bonus smokeless cigar bar where Mark Joseph Stern is right now waiting to unpack some really big legal news that we couldn't squeeze into this main show. On today's Amicus plus Bonus episode, there is an unusual amount of Supreme Court justice generated gossip as America's apex jurists have been slagging each other in public. And it has Mark and I a

[Norm Eisen]

little worried about what it means for

[Dalia Lithwick]

a couple of the big decisions pending at the high court. Visit slate.com.com amicusplus to join us. By joining, you support our work and you can play all the games you [e-mail] pairs as mentioned, is my producer Sara's emotional support game during these troubled times. You will also get ad free listening to all Slate Podcasts and Paywall free [e-mail] visit slate.com amicus+ or you can also subscribe to Slate+ directly from the Amicus show show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Our bonus episode is available for you to listen to right now. We'll see you there. Thank you so much for listening and

[Norm Eisen]

thank you so much for your letters

[Dalia Lithwick]

and your questions and your comments.

[Norm Eisen]

Keep them coming.

[Dalia Lithwick]

We are reachable by [e-mail] you can find [e-mail] Amicus Podcast.

[Norm Eisen]

You can also link Leave a comment

[Dalia Lithwick]

if you're listening on Spotify or on YouTube.

[Norm Eisen]

Or you can rate us and review

[Dalia Lithwick]

us on Apple Podcasts. Sara Burningham is Amicus's Supervising producer. Our producer is Sophie Summergrad. Hilary Fry is Slate's Editor in Chief, Susan Matthews is Executive editor, Mia Lobel is executive Producer of Slate Podcasts and Ben Richmond is our Senior Director of Operations. We'll be back with another episode of Amicus next week.

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[Norm Eisen]

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