From Orban to Trump, Part I: Talking with Kim Lane Scheppele

How Hungary foreshadowed dark times for America

Hi everyone. This post is mainly a video of a conversation I just had with Kim Lane Scheppele, an old friend who also happens to have been one of the first people to warn about the kind of autogolpe now being attempted in America. Here’s her bio at Princeton, where I got to know her. As I say early in the discussion, she’s a constitutional scholar who speaks Hungarian, which put her in a unique position to document — although, alas, not slow — the fall of democracy under Viktor Orban, and through her I followed those developments too.

I’m going to make the video available to paid subscribers only, partly as a thank you for those who have contributed, partly because this took a lot of work (and paid technical help.) Despite that, we had some connectivity glitches, which I hope aren’t too annoying here — but they got much worse in the latter part of our discussion, much of which was about America’s future. So we’ll re-record that part and I’ll post it probably next weekend.

I hope those who watch will find Kim’s discussion as enlightening as I did. Even I was startled by some of the revelations, such as the destructive role played by Angela Merkel on behalf of the German car industry.

For those who value this newsletter for the text-and-charts presentations that have dominated its content so far, don’t worry. Occasional videos will be an add-on, not a replacement for the analysis that remains the newsletter’s main purpose.

So here, just past the paywall, is Part I of my conversation with Kim Lane Scheppele: