Trump’s Threats to Media Companies Mirror Orbán’s Tactics

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s anti-media blitz tac­tics are fol­low­ing Vik­tor Orban’s author­i­tar­i­an play­book, accord­ing to media ana­lysts who com­pare the pres­i­den­t’s pres­sure cam­paigns to Hun­gary’s demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing. On 18 Sep­tem­ber 2025, CNN report­ed that ABC’s indef­i­nite sus­pen­sion of “Jim­my Kim­mel Live” rep­re­sents the lat­est exam­ple of cor­po­rate capit­u­la­tion to gov­ern­ment pres­sure, mir­ror­ing strate­gies used by the Hun­gar­i­an prime min­is­ter to con­sol­i­date media con­trol. The arti­cle begins:

Weaponize the levers of gov­ern­ment for par­ti­san polit­i­cal gain. Pres­sure pri­vate­ly owned media com­pa­nies to toe the par­ty line. Pun­ish the own­ers who resist and reward the ones who acqui­esce. That’s how Hun­gar­i­an prime min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán con­sol­i­dat­ed con­trol of the media in his coun­try, accord­ing to schol­ars who wit­nessed Hun­gary’s demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing first­hand. Pres­i­dent Trump and his allies appear to be run­ning the same play­book against media out­lets in the US. Using legal maneu­vers, finan­cial incen­tives and pub­lic pres­sure cam­paigns, Trump is per­suad­ing com­pa­nies to make changes that ben­e­fit his par­ty and bol­ster his own pow­er. Wednes­day’s deci­sion by Dis­ney’s ABC to side­line Jim­my Kim­mel is the lat­est example.

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/18/media/trump-fcc-kimmel-free-speech-viktor-orban-hungary

Key Points

• ABC sus­pend­ed Jim­my Kim­mel after Trump’s FCC chair threat­ened reg­u­la­to­ry action against Dis­ney and its broad­cast network.
• The ACLU described the sus­pen­sion as part of a broad­er cam­paign to restrict crit­ics and weak­en First Amend­ment protections.
• Ana­lysts com­pared Trump’s legal tac­tics and finan­cial pres­sure on net­works to Vik­tor Orbán’s sys­tem­at­ic cap­ture of Hungary’s media.
• Cor­po­rate set­tle­ments and reg­u­la­to­ry probes show how U.S. com­pa­nies capit­u­late indi­vid­u­al­ly, echo­ing Hungary’s demo­c­ra­t­ic backsliding.

Trump and Orbán: How Hungarian and American Authoritarianism Share Tactics

Hun­gar­i­an and Trump author­i­tar­i­an mod­els both employ sys­tem­at­ic tar­get­ing of civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions, with Hun­gary estab­lish­ing sov­er­eign­ty pro­tec­tion mea­sures that inves­ti­gate for­eign-fund­ed NGOs and media while Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion dis­man­tled USAID and brand­ed democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion orga­ni­za­tions as regime change appa­ra­tus. Both sys­tems uti­lize ide­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion net­works to pro­mote illib­er­al gov­er­nance, as Hun­gary’s Math­ias Corv­i­nus Col­legium dis­sem­i­nates anti-LGBTQ pro­pa­gan­da with Russ­ian-style mes­sag­ing while host­ing US aca­d­e­mics who praise author­i­tar­i­an models.

Trump’s pow­er struc­ture oper­ates through coali­tion man­age­ment held togeth­er by per­son­al loy­al­ty rather than ide­o­log­i­cal coher­ence, allow­ing tac­ti­cal flex­i­bil­i­ty while main­tain­ing cen­tral­ized con­trol through reg­u­la­to­ry weaponiza­tion against crit­ics. Both mod­els exem­pli­fy mod­ern auto­crat­ic net­works that oper­ate across geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries, shar­ing resources and meth­ods through plat­forms like CPAC Hun­gary where Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives col­lab­o­rate with Hun­gar­i­an offi­cials to exchange tac­tics for insti­tu­tion­al cap­ture. The imple­men­ta­tion reveals sophis­ti­cat­ed legal frame­works designed to elim­i­nate oppo­si­tion voic­es while main­tain­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic appear­ances, with Orbán declar­ing that orga­ni­za­tions receiv­ing for­eign fund­ing “can­not accept mon­ey from abroad in order to influ­ence Hun­gar­i­an pol­i­tics” and promis­ing legal con­se­quences for violators.

Democ­ra­cy schol­ars rate Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy’s decline pre­cip­i­tous­ly from 67 to 55 points, rep­re­sent­ing the biggest drop since track­ing began in 2017, while not­ing that Trump has accu­mu­lat­ed pow­er more rapid­ly than auto­crats like Orbán typ­i­cal­ly achieve dur­ing their ini­tial con­sol­i­da­tion phas­es. The con­ver­gence demon­strates how con­tem­po­rary author­i­tar­i­an­ism achieves polit­i­cal dom­i­nance through incre­men­tal ero­sion of demo­c­ra­t­ic over­sight rather than dra­mat­ic insti­tu­tion­al col­lapse, using what schol­ars iden­ti­fy as com­pet­i­tive author­i­tar­i­an­ism where elec­tions con­tin­ue but the play­ing field becomes sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tilt­ed toward rul­ing par­ties through weaponized state agen­cies and cap­tured civ­il ser­vice systems.

Exter­nal References:

• Hun­gary to ban pro-democ­ra­cy groups, media out­lets receiv­ing US aid
• Hun­dreds of schol­ars say U.S. is swift­ly head­ing toward authoritarianism
• The Path to Amer­i­can Author­i­tar­i­an­ism: What Comes After Demo­c­ra­t­ic Breakdown

Dis­claimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.

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