In Hungary in February 2024, Péter Magyar, then a little-known insider in the ruling Fidesz party, gave an interview to a leading independent YouTube channel called Partizán in which he accused Viktor Orbán’s government of systemic corruption. Hungary had become a “family-owned business,” he declared, in what rapidly became a viral video. Within weeks of recording the exchange, Magyar began building an opposition campaign essentially from scratch. Just over two years later, in the April 2026 elections, he was elected prime minister by a wide margin, and the party he built, the Tisza party, gained nearly 70 percent of parliamentary seats in a record-turnout election.
Magyar constructed his campaign around broad, non-ideological themes of inclusive nationalism and patriotism, telling Hungarians over and over that they should believe in the possibility of creating a “humane” Hungary. Rooting out corruption and restoring the rule of law were central planks of his message. His focus on fighting corruption gained deep traction in a society roiled by a steady stream of shocking stories from credible independent sources about staggering levels of corruption among those in the Fidesz ruling circle and their families.
In the United States, pro-democracy activists and politicians also are increasingly seeking to make corruption a primary focus, to blunt the Trump administration’s executive overreach and to highlight its disregard for the rule of law. House Democrats have launched a new task force to overhaul ethics rules and highlight the Trump family’s business deals. Several prominent Democratic politicians have made fighting corruption core to their political message.
With the Hungarian election standing as a startling example of unexpected success for democratic forces, some U.S. activists and politicians are asking if they can and should emulate Magyar’s anti-corruption playbook. Various pro-democracy groups have highlighted the Hungarian election as a potential model.
Can Magyar’s heavily anti-corruption focused political campaign be a successful model for those seeking to defend U.S. democracy?
From Anti-Corruption Crusader to Mafia Boss
Orbán first came to power in 2010 as an anti-corruption crusader, accusing the ruling center-left government of having established an “oligarchy” based on “lies, propaganda and corruption.” He capitalized on widespread popular discontent with the country’s ruling elites, fueled by a leaked recording that featured Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány berating his colleagues for enriching the “upper ten thousand” with public money. Orbán and Fidesz promised to deliver more just and efficient governance and to purge state institutions of ex-communist holdover elites.
Yet after 16 years of Fidesz rule, the political landscape looked decidedly different. Hungary ranked as the worst-performing member of the European Union on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, with its score dropping 15 points between 2012 and 2025. Individuals in Orbán’s inner circle raked in the riches. His childhood friend Lőrinc Mészáros had accumulated as much as $5 billion, while his son-in-law had become one of the richest people in Hungary. Using credit, tax inspections, and health and safety requirements, the government pushed independent businesses, including media outlets, to sell their assets to Fidesz allies, and passed vast amounts of public contracts and EU subsidies on to favored businesses.
Over time, this system of cronyism and personal enrichment had punishing consequences for Hungarians’ daily lives. The healthcare system, for instance, was chronically underfunded: one investigation found that since 2020, there were 770 cases of hospital departments being closed or suspending services due to staffing shortages, faulty equipment, and infrastructure problems requiring repairs. Another report uncovered that 18 percent of people using Hungarian public hospitals and clinics had to pay a bribe in the preceding 12 months. While ordinary people were struggling to get adequate healthcare and dealing with the lowest ratios of doctors per resident in the EU, the Orbán government was building massive new soccer stadiums.
Systemic corruption was not only channeling public money into private coffers—it was also depriving the country of valuable external resources. The EU froze approximately 18 billion euros in economic support funds due to the country’s deteriorating rule of law, after the country had already lost more than 1 billion euros in EU funds due to its failure to implement anti-corruption reforms. Heading into the 2026 election, Hungary’s economy was stagnant, with investment falling rapidly, housing costs rising, and education quality declining.
An Effective Messenger
This situation created fertile ground for an anti-corruption movement. And Magyar proved to be an unusually effective figure to channel public frustration with Orbán’s governance failures.
As a former Fidesz activist and official, he had credibility when he described Orbán’s regime as a “mafia state.” He was able to present himself as someone who had once bought into Orbánism and had seen how it functioned from within, thereby reaching a wider set of citizens than those traditionally aligned with the opposition. Because of his identity as a former insider with conservative and nationalist credentials, Fidesz struggled to smear him as a cosmopolitan liberal or EU stooge.
Magyar was also highly disciplined in his message, steering clear of divisive ideological battles. His key message was simple: corruption has a cost. He continuously linked corruption and economic stagnation to Hungarians’ everyday concerns, focusing on worsening healthcare, inflation, and declining living standards. This message reached voters due to the Tisza party’s relentless, innovative grassroots mobilization, with thousands of volunteers campaigning across the country and Magyar holding multiple rallies per day that were assiduously disseminated online.
Mounting Corruption Concerns in the United States
Americans, too, are fed up with corruption. A June 2026 poll conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 9 in 10 voters, including supermajorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, believe that corruption is a big problem in U.S. politics, and that it results in worse governance and public services. In fact, an August 2025 YouGov survey found that Americans ranked corruption as their top concern, edging out inflation, poverty, and violent crime.
They are right to be worried. While bribery is relatively uncommon in the United States, other challenges have abounded already for years: dark money has flooded American elections, members of Congress routinely trade stocks in companies that their committees oversee, Supreme Court justices have accepted undisclosed gifts from political donors, and a revolving door spins between Washington policymakers and the lobbying industry.
The second Trump administration has compounded these problems with new — and, in many ways, unprecedented — abuses of power. Investigative reporting has uncovered a repeated pattern of “pay to play”: the apparent granting of pardons, appointments, favorable regulatory moves, government contracts, and access to powerful insiders in exchange for financial contributions from wealthy individuals. President Donald Trump and his family have also apparently used his presidency for self-enrichment, eroding the boundary between government action and private business activity. For example, recent financial disclosures show that Trump made $1.16 billion in crypto sales and royalties from memecoins in his first year back in office. At the same time, the administration has deregulated the crypto industry and rolled back its enforcement of existing rules, while also weakening offices, removing personnel, and disbanding initiatives focused on combating corruption across government agencies. To those already opposed to Trump, it can seem almost unthinkable that corruption this brazen would not carry a significant electoral cost.
Polarization and System Mistrust
Like Hungarians, Americans thus seem ready for a political campaign focused on an anti-corruption message. But there are also important differences between the U.S. and Hungarian political landscapes.
For one, Trump has been in continuous power for significantly less time than Orbán, who became deeply intertwined with every aspect of Hungarian governance during his 16 years in office (and that was after returning to office following his ouster after a first four-year term from 1998 to 2002). So in Hungary, voters frustrated with public services and corruption could be mobilized around a single, clear target, namely the man who had built and then embodied the system itself. In the United States, that fusion is far less complete. Trump has served two non-consecutive terms, and often still positions himself as an outsider challenging the system rather than the person running it.
While many Americans thus experience the political and economic system as rigged against them, the link to Trump himself is more contested and shaped by partisanship. For example, a 2026 Pew Research survey found that 88 percent of Democrats believed ethics and honesty in the federal government had declined under Trump, compared with only 23 percent of Republicans. Similarly, the May 2026 Brennan Center survey found that while 68 percent of respondents considered Trump corrupt, 63 percent said the same of Biden. Fully 85 percent deemed Congress as a whole to be corrupt and 52 percent said the same about their own U.S. representative.
Those findings show not only deep partisan divisions, but also that a significant share of Americans believe that “all” or “most” government officials are focused on personal gain, and that “all” or “most” prioritize billionaires and big corporations over ordinary people. In other words, they believe that both political parties and the political class as a whole, not just the Trump administration, are tainted and have failed to live up to their promises to citizens.
This cynicism poses a potential problem for pro-democracy advocates. When corruption is understood as a feature of the entire political class rather than a specific set of abuses by a specific administration, it becomes harder to make the case that Trump represents something different and worse than previous administrations. And that, in turn, makes it easier for voters to disengage entirely. In a two-party system, it also makes it harder for Democratic Party politicians to assume the mantle of change agents, as they may struggle to reach voters who view the Democrats as equally corrupt or who have lost faith in the political establishment as a whole. In Hungary, Magyar was convincing precisely because he was a former regime insider rather than a conventional opposition figure. In the United States, where system distrust runs high, the most effective messenger for a broad anti-corruption coalition might be someone who can credibly claim distance not only from the Trump administration, but also from Democratic party elites and the latter’s brand and governing track record. So far, it is not clear who that figure might be.
The U.S. economic picture also differs. In Hungary, the Tisza Party could trace failing public services and frozen EU funds directly back to Orbán’s system of cronyism, making corruption a tangible explanation for citizens’ declining living standards. In the United States, economic grievances are real and widespread: majorities of Americans are frustrated with rising living costs. Yet the connection between Trump’s personal enrichment and affordability issues is less evident: Trump’s abuses of power, though brazen, do little, if at all, to explain the soaring costs of groceries or housing. The challenge for a pro-democracy movement is thus to connect these bread-and-butter issues to both a broader system of elite capture and Trump’s self-dealing. Otherwise, there is a risk that focusing on the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool renovation, the administration’s staff firings, or the Trump family’s crypto-earnings become a distraction from the economic issues that remain front-of-mind for most voters.
What Comes Next After an Electoral Victory?
Translating Hungary’s anti-corruption playbook to the United States raises a final challenge: having a realistic plan to act on campaign promises.
Magyar and his party won 55.26 percent of the vote, and now hold 141 out of 199 seats in parliament. This supermajority makes it easier for him to enact his anti-corruption agenda. On June 23, the parliament passed a first large package of laws to this effect, abolishing public interest asset management foundations that had become channels for shifting public assets into private hands. The parliament also approved the reorganization of public-service media, restricted political hate campaigns, and laid the groundwork for a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office, a new anti-corruption institution charged with identifying, tracing, and recovering stolen public funds.
In the United States, meanwhile, even significant opposition support is unlikely to translate into a legislative supermajority, given increasing geographic sorting of voters combined with a first-past-the-post electoral system and a Senate designed to give equal weight to states regardless of population. As a result, without stronger incentives for bipartisan cooperation, any politicians or administration strongly committed to a transformative anti-corruption agenda will likely struggle to implement the ambitious and systemic reforms that U.S. anti-corruption advocates say are needed, such as mandatory dark-money disclosure requirements for federal campaign spending, a ban on presidential profiteering, and a federal ethics enforcement agency with rule-making and lawsuit authority. Some reforms would, in fact, require constitutional amendments, including restoring campaign finance limits or limiting the president’s pardoning power.
Yet ramping up public communications on corruption without robust subsequent action risks fueling further disenchantment and cynicism, particularly among those who already have low trust in government. Pro-democracy advocates therefore need to be clear-eyed about where reform energy is most likely to bear fruit. They could, for instance, highlight openings like the congressional stock trading ban — which commands 86 percent support across party lines and has bipartisan legislation already introduced — as well as successful anti-corruption ballot initiatives.
Not Just Rhetoric
The desire to learn from and emulate the Hungarian pro-democracy playbook to defend U.S. democracy is understandable. There are clearly important lessons for democracy advocates to glean: that abstract problems like corruption need to be connected to people’s daily concerns, for example, and that pro-democracy politicians running against illiberal opponents need strong message discipline, relentless grassroots organizing, and a clear, solid plan for follow-through.
But it would be wrong to draw the lesson that simply shining a spotlight on the government’s corruption is enough to mobilize a pro-democracy electoral coalition. Magyar’s anti-corruption message worked because of a specific set of conditions: an incumbent leader who had become fused with the country’s governance system, corruption that visibly degraded people’s living standards, a stagnating economy, and a credible messenger carrying out a relentless, well-organized campaign.
The deeper lesson, then, is that a successful anti-corruption campaign in the United States cannot simply be a re-branding effort. In the United States, frustrations with elite capture are real but politically diffuse, shaped by partisanship and general system distrust. Many see corruption as systemic, and a message that treats it as a Trump problem alone will fail to connect with those who believe the entire system is rigged. Reaching them will likely require messengers who can credibly claim distance from both parties, and it is not yet clear who those figures might be. And because anti-corruption messaging can just as easily fuel fatalism, advocates must also articulate a credible pathway to reform, offering both a longer-term vision and concrete near-term wins.
