← The Rachel Maddow Show
The Rachel Maddow Show
Maddow: Trump's fear is palpable as authoritarian peer Orbán is resoundingly rejected in Hungary
00:44:27
Rachel Maddow highlights some striking parallels between Donald Trump and the authoritarian regime his administration is modeled on, Victor Orbán in Hungary. Maddow notes that the basis for an authoritarian's power is the sense that their continued rule is inevitable, so seeing Orbán tossed from power so handily by the voters of Hungary sends a clear and upsetting message to Trump, and an encouraging message to Trump's opponents.
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Rachel Maddow
Super happy to have you here. So imagine you are a small country. You're very proud, very important country. But you are little and you are not very rich. And you decide in your little country that it is time to put in street lights, right? You think we may not be a wealthy country, but gosh darn it, it is the 21st century. And in a bunch of our little towns and villages that want them, we're gonna put in street lights or we're gonna upgrade streetlights in places that need them to be fixed up. We're gonna get funding, we'll get grants for streetlights and we're gonna do that all. Now if you are a town that wants in on this project, if you you want some street lights for your town, what your government tells you is, okay, here's how you're going to do it. Your town, your village. If you want street lights, what you have to do is you have to hire this particular company and it's a consulting company. And that consulting company will assess your town's needs. And after they do an assessment in your town, they will basically attest to what kind of street you need. And then those are the kind of streetlights you will get. That's the process. That's how we're getting streetlights in our country. And it turns out that is all the little towns all over the country start going through this process to get their street lights. They all, as they are told to do, they all hire this one company, this one consulting firm to help them get their street lights. And a couple of things pretty quickly emerge. First of all, that company, the company they're all told they have to use in order to get their streetlights. That company turns out to be owned by a guy who's in business with the Prime Minister's son in law. And the business he's in with the Prime Minister's son in law, the company they own together turns out to be a company that makes streetlights. Huh, What a coincidence, right? So every little town all over your country has to hire this one company and every single time the guy who runs that company comes in, looks around and says, yes, I've looked at this very carefully, I've assessed your unique needs here in your town. And it turns out the only streetlights you should get, the only streetlights you can get, the streetlights in fact, that you're going to get are the streetlights that are only sold by the company that is owned by the Prime Minister's son in law and also me. That is your only choice. You want streetlights, that's how you get them. And even though these guys had no street light expertise, even though their company was brand new, essentially set up just for this purpose, even though basically nobody else had ever bought streetlights from them before without being forced to do so, now all of a sudden, boy, do they have a lot of business. Yeah. The Prime Minister's son in law turns out to be basically the sole supplier of streetlights to towns and villages all, all over the country. And as such, he is paid very handsomely for that in public funds. The country where this happened happens to be in Europe. And it turns out the funding for the streetlights came from the European Union, from the eu. When investigative reporters figured out that this scheme was happening with the street lights, and when the EU investigated themselves, they realized this, you know, well intentioned project, sort of small scale project to put streetlights in this poor country had instead become basically just a project to make the Prime Minister's son in law a millionaire. The company of course, says they did nothing wrong, but the EU pulled their funding for that project. How did the Prime Minister react to that? He said, well, okay, I guess we can't do this with EU funds anymore. We'll just pay for it ourselves. Our country, out of our meager budget as one of the poorest countries in Europe will pay for for it. Which means the Prime Minister decided that he would just pay his son in law directly from government funds. And that is how Viktor Orban's son in law made his first millions. Since then, over the course of Viktor Orban's 16 years in power, Orban's son in law has become One of the wealthiest men in the whole country, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. At least one of the sectors he's in is street lights. Another sector is that he owns lots, luxury hotels. I mentioned the eu, the European Union. The EU has a presidency that rotates from country to country every six months. When the EU presidency automatically rotated to Hungary, to Viktor Orban a couple years ago, what that meant in very practical terms is that there would be lots of official delegations from other European countries coming to Hungary all the time, coming to Budapest to do EU business, because Viktor Orban was the president resident of the EU for that six month period. What some of those other countries would soon find was that no matter what hotels they booked themselves into in Budapest for one of these official visits, the Orban government would somehow find a way to unbook them from the hotels they wanted to stay at. And instead they would find themselves magically rebooked into one of the hotels owned by Viktor Orban's son in law. They would make reservations at different hotels and the Orban government would unbook them and put them in his son in law's hotels instead. That was uncovered by Investigative reporting from Direct 36 and V Square in Hungary. Viktor Orban's son in law has had a good time of it, while his father in law has been in effectively dictatorial control of the country of Hungary. The FT reported last year that he nearly doubled his net worth to almost 500 million euros just in the previous year alone. Nice. But ahead of the elections yesterday in Hungary, which saw that young man's father in law turfed out of power after 16 years and potentially now facing prosecution for corruption and theft of public assets. Ahead of yesterday's election in Hungary, Orban's son in law left the country. He left Hungary and reportedly relocated to the friendlier environs of the United States. And forgive me, I am terrible with Hungarian names. So I don't know exactly how to pronounce the son in law's name. You can see it there, it's spelled I S T V A N T I B O R C Z. I don't know exactly how you say that name, but I think that it's pronounced Jared. Jared. I think that's, that's not true, but that is one way to pronounce it. Istvan. Jared. Trumpism in the United States is not just a purely personal thing. Trumpism in the United States is not just a big political manifestation of the quirky authoritarian personality of Donald Trump the man. I mean, it may be that for Trump himself. But in terms of power, in terms of governance, in terms of why all these other people on the American far right like Trump in power and what they want to do with Trump in power, it's not just based on Trump's personality. It's actually based on a model. More than anything else, it is based on the model of Viktor Orban in Hungary. Remember Project 2025? The Heritage foundation created Project 2025 to plan out what exactly the Trump administration would do once they got into power. And the Trump administration has followed that blueprint very tightly. Head of the Heritage foundation says outright that in. In looking for a model for how conservatives should approach power and government, he said Viktor Orban is not a model of how to do that. He says Viktor Orban is the model for how to do that. And so even though Hungary is this tiny little country, I mean, Hungary's whole population was the size of New Jersey, the Trump movement has nevertheless been obsessed with it from the very beginning. I mean, J.D. vance Vice President J.D. vance just called Viktor Orban the greatest statesman, the one of the only true statesmen in Europe. Under Orban's leadership, Hungary has become by some measures the single poorest country in the European Union. Hungary is tied with Bulgaria for the most corrupt country in the European Union. It's got the highest cumulative inflation in the whole European Union. Hungary's inflation in the past six years is double what it is in the rest of the eu. Hungary's salaries are less than half the average what people get paid elsewhere in the EU. Its unemployment is the highest it's been in 10 years. Its total economic economic growth in the whole country last year was an anemic 0.4%, 0.4%. That said, you know what? Our economic growth at the end of last year was basically just as bad. It was 0.5%. Because, you know, turns out all these guys have all the same ideas. And it turns out illiberal, authoritarian leaders are really bad for their countries. They might be good for themselves and their families, but their economic performance in particular is always terrible. And it's funny what pushed out Viktor Orban after all these years. I mean, his economic performance in office really has been absolutely terrible for the people of his country, as Donald Trump's time in office is turning out to be for us. But somehow in Hungary, somehow, Jared, I mean, whatever his name is, somehow Viktor Orban's son in law has become one of the wealthiest people in that whole part of Europe, and then he has apparently fled that country with all of his money and come here instead. Viktor Orban's close childhood friend, a plumber who somehow became the richest person in the entire country of Hungary. He's rich enough that the political opposition to Orban this summer started organizing field trips, they called them safaris, for ordinary Hungarians to go to that guy's house, to go drive around the immense private zoo full of exotic animals that Orban's best friend had built for himself. After Orban shoveled him so much money that he became a billionaire off of contracts from Orban's government, Started off as a plumber, is now the richest man in the country with a huge private zoo. Thousands of ordinary Hungarians came. People came from all over the country. Lines of cars stretching for miles, all there to see the private zoo. Orban's corruption had paid for with their tax dollars. You know how in this country we have people dressed up in inflatable frog costumes and stuff? At our anti ice protests in Hungary, people dress up in inflatable zebras, inflatable zebra costumes, because Viktor Orban's best friend had his billionaire private zoo stuffed full of zebras brought there for his pleasure. Viktor Orban is the model to American Trump supporters, to the people who have insisted on supporting Donald Trump in office, it is because they look at Donald Trump, they squint and they see Viktor Orban. Viktor Orban is the model. He's the Platonic ideal of what Trump's time in power is supposed to be. Their whole idea is that Trump is supposed to follow Viktor Orban's lead, to read his blueprint and follow it, to use the power of the state to change the rules, to change everything, so that he and his friends can never be removed from power, to make their illiberal regime election proof. And with rulers like that entrenched in power so they cannot be removed, Orban was the longest serving leader in all of Europe when he was ousted yesterday. With guys like that effectively election proof and entrenched in power in western countries, like in Hungary, which is part of the EU and part of NATO, or like the United States, which is the United States, the idea is that if you've got a permanent, authoritarian, illiberal ruler like an Orban or a Trump in power indefinitely, you can break Europe, you can break the west, you can break NATO, you can chop up and divide the free world so that it becomes food for the permanent strongmen who will rule forever. That's the overall dream. And here is the really loud alarm clock that just went off and woke those guys up from that dream. Strongman authoritarians like Orban and like Trump, their ongoing rule is not inevitable. It is not a fate that our countries cannot escape from. These guys are not permanently in power. They are not in power for life. As the disciplined, non violent, big tense, sustainable growing resistance to Orban started to coalesce. As Orban started to look like he was going to lose, his supposedly unbreakable base of support just collapsed. The guy who just beat him is a former member of his own party. Nobody actually likes a corrupt despot. They all just support him because they think he's going to be in power forever. So you need to stay on his right side in order to get anything for yourself. When it becomes clear that that's not true, that the despot is not going to be there forever, it always, everywhere always falls apart. It's like an ugly, mean rich guy with a bad personality who gets lots of dates and lots of nookie all the time, and then somehow he loses his money and he is shocked to find himself very suddenly, all alone. I wonder what it was that people used to like about me that they don't like about me now. In the end, there is no one who is a true believer in a corrupt despot other than his henchmen and his family, and sometimes not even them. Did I mention that Viktor Orban's son in law, the streetlight millionaire, has apparently fled to the United States? Now, far right authoritarian parties that are like Trump and that have been supported by Trump have lost in the past year in Germany and in France and in the Netherlands and elsewhere. But what happened yesterday, Viktor Orban losing this election yesterday and losing in a wild, huge landslide election that just swamped everything he had done to try to make himself and his party election proof. This is just the prototype that Trump and the Republicans had built for him, right? This is just that prototype crashing to the ground in spectacular fashion. So we're going to talk about that tonight with the former ambassador to that country under Joe Biden. One of the things the new opposition, well, now the new leadership of Hungary says it's going to do now that they have won and they've ousted Orban, is they're talking about essentially redemocratizing their country, not just prosecuting people for corruption and thievery, although they are going to do that, but they also say they want to undo the illiberal things that Orban and his party did to break that democracy, to break and corrupt that country's government, to try to make Orban's grip on power effectively permanent. To make it so elections really wouldn't work anymore. I mean, that effort failed. Yesterday. They were swamped by the opposition. After 16 years of Orban, the people of that country rose up and threw him out in huge numbers. And so now the new leadership of that country, having ousted Orban, they say they're going to reform their system so nobody can try to do what he did again. Nobody can again try to steal that democracy and turn it into a dictatorship. We're going to talk about that tonight because I think it's a salient lesson for the Democratic Party in the United States in thinking ahead about their electoral platform, for what they will tell voters they're going to try to do and what they should try to do if they get back in power, if and when they oust Trump and his. His party and his movement. A program of redemocratizing the United States that undoes and bans permanently the things Trump has been trying to do to turn our country into a strongman state, to undo our constitutional republic. So it's happening right now as we speak in Hungary, and it's a lot to chew on in terms of the path that is ahead for us. Even once it was clear that Orban was going to lose, President Trump sent his vice president, J.D. vance, over to Budapest, over to Hungary, to make campaign appearances with Orban, to shake his hand and stick his thumb up in the air and to say how much he was sure Viktor Orban was gonna win. Right before Viktor Orban lost in a landslide. Why did he send JD Vance over to do that after it was so clear Orban was going down? It's like when Trump nominated the disgraced Republican congressman, Matt Gaetz, Remember him nominated him to be Attorney general. Do you remember that? Right at the beginning term in Trump's presidency. I mean, they knew very quickly that Matt Gaetz definitely was not going to get through, he was not going to be confirmed. But before they made him withdraw, Trump sent J.D. vance up to Capitol Hill to walk arm in arm with Matt Gaetz around the United States Senate, to take into all those senators offices to give him his big endorsement and say how much he personally believed in him and how sure he was that Matt Gaetz was going to be confirmed as Attorney General when it was already clear that gates was going down. Why did Trump send him to do that? Total humiliation for J.D. vance. I mean, they just did the exact same thing to him with Orban in Hungary, sending him over there before Orban just got shellacked, and then Trump sent him straight from there to talks with Iran, which instantly failed and which were probably always going to fail, while the president said explicitly in Washington that if the talks failed, the whole war could then be blamed on J.D. vance. Thank you, sir. May I have another? In Iran now, we have moved on from Iran blockading the Strait of Hormuz to the United States blockading the Strait of Hormuz. So if you think the war was going great before, you're going to love it from here on out. This has a clear strategic purpose. Definitely. Sure. The president said this weekend that lots of other countries are going to join with us to implement this blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Apparently no other countries are joining with us to implement this blockade. But don't worry. By meanwhile deciding to move on to attacking the Pope at the exact moment his vice president, J.D. vance, is starting to promote his new book about how excited he is to become a new Catholic, Donald Trump is presumably trying to so humiliate his vice president that he drives J.D. vance to quit, which would at least give Trump a chance to pick a new vice president before the midterms, which might shake things up a bit for him and his Republican Party. Yeah, pay no attention to the $10 a gallon gas and the fact that we're now a pariah rogue state, don't you think? Vice President Jared is very impressive. Would you like him to sell you some street lights? The pushback against Donald Trump and his administration continues to accelerate and continues to pay off for basically everyone who's willing to do it. Today, for example, Trump lost the case he had brought against the Wall Street Journal over their reporting on Trump's super creepy birthday greeting to convicted pedophile and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Today, the Trump administration caved and agreed that the Stonewall National Monument in New York City will be allowed to continue to fly pride flag that Trump had previously insisted must come down. All the people who came out to protest at Stonewall when they pulled down the pride flag today, you won. They caved. The flag is back up now and forever. The news organizations who sued Trump and Pete Hegseth to stop the bizarre new Pentagon press policy where they kicked all the real reporters out of the Pentagon. Those people who are suing over that policy have been winning hand over fist in court with the judge in the case in his latest ruling denouncing what Trump and Hegseth have done there as, quote, authoritarian, saying it smacks of an autocracy, not a democracy. Even the librarians are winning. Librarians sued When Trump inexplicably tried to shut down the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, which was created by Congress. It's not a high profile organization, but if you're a librarian, it is. It's because that's the part of the federal government that funds libraries. And Trump tried to kill it. But the librarians, too, they just won in court. And that agency cannot be shut down or have its funding taken away. Everywhere people are pushing back against Trump. They are beating him. Trump's efforts to build himself a huge new network of prison camps to hold people without trial is also falling apart. And the pushback against him on this is getting pushier and, frankly, more effective all the time. They haven't been able to open up any of these gigantic 10,000 bed warehouses they've bought to try to turn them into Trump prison camps. They've been blocked so far by all different kinds of local protest. In three states, there are lawsuits that have been brought by the state against these things. One in Michigan to stop the Trump prison camp that's planned for Romulus, Michigan. One in New Jersey to stop the prison camp that's planned for Roxbury, New Jersey. And one in Maryland to stop the Trump prison camp that's planned for a site near Hagerstown. That one in Maryland has been successful thus far. It has already stopped ICE from working on that site to turn it into a prison. One thing to watch this week, the federal judge who's hearing that case is going to hold a hearing on it in federal court in Baltimore on Wednesday. The activists, the fierce, scrappy activists in Maryland who have been opposing that, they're expecting a full house, a full courthouse full of people on Wednesday in Baltimore opposing that prison camp. Also expecting a big interfaith vigil outside. That is absolutely worth watching. We reported earlier that the state of Pennsylvania last month issued an order that bans the Trump administration from hooking up any of these warehouse facilities in Pennsylvania to any local water or sewer facilities. That's from Josh Shapiro's administration in Pennsylvania. Blocking those warehouse facilities from using water or sewer means they cannot open. Well, today the state of Maryland followed down that road. They issued an order telling the Trump administration that that Hagerstown, Maryland warehouse site cannot and will not be allowed to use local sewers next week, Thursday the 23rd. Here's another tactic that's being used against them. People are going to be protesting next week, Thursday the 23rd, in Rhode island at the annual shareholders meeting for Citizens bank to try to get Citizens bank to cut their financial ties with companies operating Trump prison camps. Two days after that, Saturday, April 25, there's going to be a national day of protests all over the country against Trump. Trump trying to build himself these prison camps anywhere again, that national Day of Action plan for Saturday, April 25, just in the past few days, the failure of Trump's efforts to build these prison camps and local people standing up to him and saying no, even in Republican areas. Those efforts just in the past few days have been the subject of national and international press everywhere from the New York Times to the BBC to the Associated Press to the Atlantic magazine and more. And it continues tonight. I'm sure you've noticed the news out of Congress is dominated by the very dramatic announcements from two members of Congress that they are each resigning their seats effective immediately. One of them is Republican Tony Gonzalez. The other is Democrat Eric Swalwell. They have both been accused of serious sexual misconduct. Swalwell only recently, but Tony Gonzalez for months now, both men have denied committing any crimes, but both men said tonight they will resign from the House. One Republican, one Democrat. Swalwell is also abandoning his campaign for California governor for the same reasons, but for members of Congress who are not resigning because they've been consumed with horrific personal scandal. What we are seeing Democrats now do all over the country, whenever they are home from work, whenever they are on recess like they were this past week, what we are seeing is that they are showing up in many cases unannounced at ICE prisons, at these so called holding facilities and detention centers, these prisons and jails effectively where ICE is holding people without trial. We're seeing it all over the country. Democrats everywhere in the country are doing this. Now. Here's Jim McGovern, for example, the Democrat of Massachusetts negotiating with ICE to let him in the door of the ICE prison in Burlington, Massachusetts. They let him in alone. They wouldn't let him bring in any staff or a translator, but they let him in while tons of people protested outside that facility. And he came out and reported on the conditions that he found. Here's Democratic Congresswoman Angie Craig making an unannounced oversight visit to the ICE jail at the Whipple Building in Minnesota. Here's Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz making an unannounced oversight visit to the Everglades tent prison camp in Florida, that so called alligator Alcatraz facility, and reporting back on the horrific conditions she says that she found there. She said it was absolutely disgusting. Here's Democratic Congressman and Andre Carson in Indiana having just gone inside one of the places ICE is holding people in that state in Miami County, Indiana. There are about a hundred protesters outside opposing that facility. His oversight visit there coming just after yet another person has died in custody at that site, at that one ice facility in Indiana that have had, they've had two people dead in less than two months. In Mesa, Arizona, there's a really dramatic story to tell you about what just happened to three Democratic members of Congress there involving a strange ICE facility that they've sort of hidden inside an airport. One of those Arizona congresswoman is going to join us in just a minute to tell us what she and her colleagues found there and how they knew to go there when they did, which is a very dramatic story and also how, how shaken they all were by what they found once they got in. Again, this is a very dramatic story out of Arizona. We've got that coming up with the congresswoman in just a moment. But while the president of the United States is in the state of mind that he is in, while he is posting pictures of himself online that portray himself as Jesus Christ, while at the same time he is attacking the pope, while his actions have slowed the economy to such a crawl that in other countries, that same level of economic stagnation is cited as a reason that country just rose up and overthrew its authoritarian leadership. As Donald Trump is taking these increasingly wild and increasingly inexplicable military swings in the Middle east that really do make no sense, that appear to have no point, and that have left us with almost literally no allies in the entire world. As the president appears bizarrely to be trying, I guess, potentially to offload his vice president, because maybe that'll help amid all of this insanity. It may be a good time to remember that this kind of desperation from the White House and from the president is palpably driven by fear, by the expectation that voters, that the public, that the nation at large has turned against him and is doing so more and more every day, that the country is going to turf him and his party out on their ear and quickly. I mean, the whole idea of these guys, Orban and Trump and all of them, the whole idea of them, is to create a false sense of permanence, that they can never be ousted, that they will never leave, that resistance is futile, that you better line up with them because you'll never beat them. They're going to be here forever. Well, how's that going? Streetlights or no, the streets of Budapest, the streets of Hungary last night were lit up to the stratosphere with pure joy, lit up like a beacon with the proof that the people can fix problems like this like Viktor Orban and like Donald Trump and that no would be strongman can stop it anywhere no matter what. Lots to get to tonight. Stay with with us.
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Rachel Maddow
this sort of nondescript building in Mesa, Arizona is an ice prison. You wouldn't know it from looking at it. It's right next to the Phoenix Mesa Airport. But according to reporting from the Arizona Mirror, there's some real trouble at that facility. It's been dangerously over capacity. This place is officially rated to not hold more than 157 people at any but the Mirror reports that on average in the last year there weren't 157 people there. The official capacity, on average there were 274 people there per day. This well, well beyond what it was built for and what it can safely hold. Arizona Mirror also reports though that when two members of Congress scheduled an inspection at that prison in February, quote, the population of detainees began to decrease to some of the lowest numbers the facility had seen all year. And then, quote, almost immediately after the inspection, those numbers began to climb again. So that's reporting in the Arizona Mirror that broke on Thursday this past week they've been all over this story. This low key facility that you wouldn't even know was there unless you knew it was there. And what they found was that this facility has been really, really dangerously overcrowded. But when a couple of members of Congress said they were coming, they brought the population way, way down. So when the members of Congress were there, it would look all well run and look all official. And then as soon as the members of Congress left, the population numbers went way, way, way up and it got way more crowded again. The Arizona Mirror again broke that story last Thursday morning. Here's the amazing thing that then happened. I said that was two members of Congress who planned that trip in February. Well, hours after the Arizona Mirror broke that news, hey, members of Congress, they brought down the numbers artificially in order to show you a fake portrait essentially of what that facility is like after you left, the numbers went way back up. As soon as that reporting broke in the Arizona Mirror on Thursday morning, those two members of Congress, Greg Stanton and Yasmine Ansari, they went back to that ICE prison in Mesa that same facility that same day and they brought along a third Democratic member of Congress with them as well, Arizona's newest Congresswoman, Adelita Grialva. This time it was not an announced visit. This time they did not tell them that they were coming. This time knowing what had happened. The last time they had advance notice. This time they just showed up and they got inside and here's what those lawmakers, reported. Quote, prisoners packed into cells, quote, like sardines. A facility almost 100 people over capacity, people lying on the floor without blankets, prisoners scrambling to the doors of the holding cells. Seeing that these were some people who seem official who were there, they were asking for help, trying to tell them about the conditions at the facility. This is the combination tactically of aggressive investigative, local reporting and members of Congress who are willing to act on it and follow up. What they found was incredibly dramatic and upsetting for them. Congresswoman Grialva is going to join us to tell us about it here next.
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Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva
People are being treated like there's no way that we could treat animals like this. We, their people would be outraged. But apparently it's fine to treat people this way. It's disgusting.
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Rachel Maddow
That was Congresswoman Adelita Grialva moments after touring the ICE immigrant prison in Mesa, Arizona. This prison has reportedly been dangerously overcrowded. That is a fact that the prison seems to have tried to hide from Congress. When the Arizona Mirror reported that the number of people at that facility had been artificially brought down to a safe number before members of Congress had made a planned visit in February. Adelita Grialva and two other Democratic members of Congress responded by going back to the facility that night for a non announced visit. She says prisoners there they found were crowded in cells like sardines. She says, quote, it was frightening in there. She said, quote, it is disgusting. Joining us now is Congresswoman Adelita Grialva, Democrat of Arizona. Congresswoman Grialva, it's an honor to have you with us tonight. Thanks for taking the time.
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Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva
Thank you for having me.
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Rachel Maddow
Tell me about your decision to make this unannounced visit. I know a little bit about the Arizona mirrors reporting and about the previous announced visit by a couple of your colleagues, but tell me how you ended up there this past week.
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Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva
Well, I think so much of the initial rumor was that there was a hunger strike. And so we wanted to go and see what the facility looked like. And when we went to the door, it's like a vacant office building. There was no indication of what was there. We actually saw activity around the corner where there were several detainees in like two different charter buses. So we went over there, grabbed their attention there and then encouraged somebody to come out. And they said, well, did you set an appointment? I said, we don't have to do an appointment anymore. We can come in. And then ironically, the paperwork that they have assigned, pledging that we will not take any recording devices, we will not speak to detainees, all of the other rules that they have literally reference and the March 2025 decision that allows members of Congress to go in without announcement. So I think that that is what we're going to have to do more and more often. This was at 10:30, 11:00 clock at night. And there were also two charter buses that had about 80 people each in those buses. So I kept asking, were these people in this facility and where would they fit? Because literally people are packed in so tight that if they said, everyone take a seat, they physically would not be able to without sitting on top of each other.
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Shopify User
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- [38:30]
Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva
Yeah, it's pretty.
- [38:31]
Rachel Maddow
We're noticing. Yeah, sorry. I was just gonna say we're noticing that a lot of members of Congress seem to be starting to do what you and your colleagues did in Arizona. We've seen just in the past few days members of Congress do this in Florida and Indiana, in Massachusetts and other places, Minnesota. Is this a coordinated effort by Democrats in the House, or does it just so happen that everybody's sort of realizing whenever you guys are out of Washington. This is something that you can do in your home states and your home districts.
- [39:00]
Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva
That's exactly what's happening, at least for me, because I visited two different facilities and had to wait the seven days. They actually asked, you know, who I was going to speak to because I need to have paperwork filled out because they have to prove that they're a constituent of mine in this specific case, you know, we'd walk by, and I'm the only one who could speak Spanish of my colleagues. And so most of the people there spoke Spanish from different countries. One woman indicated that she had already had all of her disposition done 44 days ago. She was at an airport getting ready to be deported without argument. And for whatever reason, she said, I don't know why I'm still here. They picked me up. They keep moving me around, like, when can I get home? And to me, that speaks more to what's going on in our private prisons and the fact that every person that's there, someone's getting paid. And the vast majority of people that are detained right now, of the over 70,000 people are detained in private prisons. So we have to follow the money. And also look at how inhumane people are being treated. It's disgusting. And I, there was, when I was walking by the women's facility, she asked me for sanitary napkins because there were two young ladies in there that needed sanitary napkins and didn't have them. They literally have a toilet in the middle of a space. So if you look at the top of the door, it says max occupancy, 21 people. Clearly double, almost triple the number there. And if you have to use the facility, where are you supposed to go? In front of everyone? There are no showers. So these are facilities that are supposed to be designed to have less than 12 hours. And there are people there that had been there at least three days with no end in sight.
- [40:52]
Rachel Maddow
Wow. Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grialva, thank you for doing this oversight visit. Thank you for doing it the way you did with your call so that you could get more of the real truth about what's happening there. And thank you for talking to us. We'd love to have you back. I know that you're on this and will continue to be. Thank you.
- [41:10]
Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
- [41:12]
Rachel Maddow
All right, much more news ahead here tonight. Stay with us.
- [41:17]
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- [42:54]
Rachel Maddow
A very big party broke out in Budapest in Hungary this weekend. Yesterday after voters there decisively ousted Viktor Orban, the authoritarian prime minister held power for 16 years. Now the people of Hungary have officially unyoked themselves from him. This has particular resonance in our country. And in our country, few people understand the meaning of it more than David Pressman, who served as President Biden's ambassador to Hungary from 2022 until 2025. He moved to Hungary with his husband and their two kids the year after Orban banned gay people from appearing in kids books or TV shows in that country. As America's ambassador to Hungary, Pressman was attacked by Orban and his party relentlessly. But now the people of Hungary have very, very decisively shown Orban the door. This happens while the American right is reckoning with this dramatic political collapse of a man they thought would never leave power, a man they saw as having written the blueprint they most admire for permanent right wing illiberal strongman rule. Joining us now is former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman. Mr. Ambassador, thanks very much for being here. I appreciate it.
- [44:08]
David Pressman
It's great to be with you, Rachel. Thank you for having me.
- [44:11]
Rachel Maddow
Were you surprised by the election results? Results?
- [44:14]
David Pressman
You know, I was. I was surprised that the Hungarian people were able to and Peter Magyar as a candidate was able to penetrate the incredibly aggressive propaganda Network. I mean, for 16 years, Viktor Orban has been telling the Hungarian people stories about things that are not real to distract them from things that are real. And the reality is that he's presided over a country that is now the poorest country in the European Union, the most corrupt country in the European Union. And I think Peter Mahar's point this morning, which is important for your viewers to understand, he described the, the, he, he was, he had a press conference this morning and he was interacting with some foreign reporters and he said, you know, I don't think you guys understand. This was like North Korea, like propaganda. And what Victor and, and Madra's right. Orban was able to use this intensive propaganda machine to really change the cost benefit calculus for Hungarians to engage in politics. And so when I see those crowds in the street, it fills my heart and gives me hope. These are brave Hungarians who believe in their country, who are patriots and who deserve our admiration.
- [45:30]
Rachel Maddow
With the new leadership taking over, what do you think are their prospects or even their aims for redemocratizing that country? That's obviously something that has a lot of resonance for us when we think about a post Trump era that is coming in our country trying to undo some of the Orban style, Trump style changes to try to achieve effectively autocratic breakthrough, to try to achieve the conversion of a democracy into a permanent strongman state.
- [46:01]
David Pressman
Well, you're exactly right to ask the question. I mean, the unwinding of the state capture that has gone on is going to be an enormously challenging and enormously important effort. So for instance, just to give you an example, I mean the Fides operation has taken over public universities, They've taken the public universities in Hungary, they've created so called public interest foundations, which are actually private foundations. The party, Orban's party has then installed the boards of directors of those foundations and granted them lifetime tenure and then have moved the assets of all the public universities into these foundations. So effectively taking what were public universities and turning them into the control of a single political party. Viktor Orban's political party, Peter Magyar's victory in this election doesn't change all of that. It doesn't change the fact that Viktor Orban's party has created what they call a constitutional court, but really is just a parallel judicial instrument that has jurisdiction to hear anytime the normal court system rules against the government, the government can take their case to this purported constitutional court. And of course, Fides has appointed all of the judges of that court. So the challenges of unwinding this of making sure that democratic institutions can actually function in a neutral manner are going to be enormous. And one of the things you heard Magyar say last night was he began to list the names, the offices of the people he expects to resign, beginning with the president of Hungary. And the reality is these people have been put into these positions of power not because of their service to their country, but because of their loyalty to viktor Orban,
- [47:41]
Rachel Maddow
former U.S. ambassador to Hungary. David Pressman really wanted to talk to you today as soon as I learned the news. Thank you so much for making time.
- [47:49]
David Pressman
It's great to see you, Rachel. Thanks so much.
- [47:51]
Rachel Maddow
We'll be right back. Okay, that's going to do it for me tonight.
- [48:00]
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