Pretend Orban is on the ballot — he offered handouts, too

“Pretend, please, I’m on the ballot,” said President Trump. 

It has become a common refrain at rallies, and it is how he kicked off the Republican midterm convention. The strategy is, since Trump always does well in elections, voters just need to fool themselves into thinking he’s on the ballot and the Republicans will not lose their majority in Congress.

Meanwhile the White House’s new television ad, proudly stamped with “paid for by the U.S. Government,” shows Trump moving intensely before the camera as a voice-over pitches viewers to join his “final battle” to “demolish the deep state” and “expel the warmongers from our government.”

Taking millions of taxpayer dollars that Congress had already appropriated for other uses to instead pay for a partisan campaign ad? 

“I hate it,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, “I tell you, it feels like Vicktor Orban talking to the Hungarian people.”

The reference to Orbán may be an apt one. After 16 years in power, late in 2025, Orban began to realize that his April reelection bid was in jeopardy. Orban started to hand out political giveaways. He put a cap on mortgage interest rates, subsidized housing of public-sector workers, exempted young voters and mothers from income tax, topped off pensions and injected cash into restaurants and tourism. 

His party lost in a landslide. Orban has........

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