Friday, August 05, 2022

TODD ZWILLICH

Deputy DC Bureau Chief, VICE News

Washington, D.C. Bureau
@toddzwillich

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole on August 04, 2022 in Dallas, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

HUNGARY GAMES

Hello from the road, where I'm on assignment for VICE News Tonight covering Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's visit to a sweltering summer Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. Cam Joseph, Paul Blest, and the rest of the VICE News gang are helping me out on the other news, since I've been messing around in Texas.

But you might be wondering why the jingoist "America First" crowd, which came to cheer on Mike Lindell and the Papa John guy, and now dominates American conservatism, is listening to the PM of Central Europe's not-any-where-close-to-largest country. The short answer is that Orbán is an expert troller who's learned to pepper his defenses of "Western civilization" and "Judeo-Christian values" with the kind of lib-owning and insults of vulnerable people that sends this Fox- and Facebook-fueled faction over the moon.

The longer answer is that the elite of the American right have become enamored with Orbán's authoritarian takeover of Hungary in his 12 years as PM. Orbán's used complaints of election rigging to tilt them in his favor. He's gerrymandered the Parliament, stacked the courts, and decimated Hungary's independent media. There's a dark irony to the inclusive language Orbán uses to defend "Judeo-Christian" values: There's hardly any "Judeo" left in Hungary. Orbán is a Christian nationalist, and the American right loves what he's done with it.

Check out our report from CPAC for last night's episode of VICE News Tonight:

You should also definitely not miss "Conservative Utopia," an in-depth VICE on Showtime report on the unsettling pas de deux between Orbán and the American right.

Most of the CPAC people I asked about Orbán praised him for being "strong" and "getting things done." His dismantling of democratic institutions in Hungary was not on their radar. Results were what mattered. They admired how Orbán has choked off immigration, stood up for traditional families, and defended Christianity. I could have gotten the exact same answers by watching Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News, which makes some sense, given that Carlson's twice traveled to Hungary to spotlight Orbán's accomplishments.

Half a dozen declared the classically racist view that migrants bring diseases over the border, and a few expressed a worry that immigrants are here to "replace" them. There was no outward concern for Orbán's recent comments that Hungarians are refusing to be "a people of mixed race." The only trace of discomfort could be detected in the rationalizations: The outrage over the comments was either a misunderstanding of what Orbán meant or a media smear.

Orbán came to rally the right to charge past quaint ideas like consensus and democratic norms. "You have to believe you're better than your left liberal opponents are," he advised the crowd.

Orbán also predicted that European elections and U.S. presidential elections where Donald Trump is likely to be a candidate in 2024 would be "two fronts being fought for Western civilization."

"You have to be ready," Orbán said. He didn't have to say it. They already are.

Crazing Arizona

Tuesday marked the last big primary day of the 2022 midterms, and, like in most other primaries this cycle, former President Donald Trump's slate of wackadoos and conspiracists dominated the GOP races.

Arizona Republicans nominated a pair of Trump-backed, election-denying hard-liners for secretary of state and senator—and Trump's pick for governor looks like she's headed to a win too.

State Sen. Mark Finchem, who played a key role in pushing Trump's "Stop the Steal" efforts in the state and has close ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory community, won the GOP nomination for secretary of state—putting him one election away from running Arizona's election system in the next presidential cycle. Finchem is part of a coalition of election-denying secretary of state candidates backed by QAnon power players.

Trump's election-denying pick for Senate, Blake Masters, also won his primary to face Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. Masters is an acolyte of authoritarian tech bro Peter Thiel. He's said he thinks Trump won in 2020, claimed he's worried about "anti-white racism," pushed the racist great replacement conspiracy theory, and promulgated the false claim that the Jan. 6 insurrection was actually a false-flag operation by the FBI.

Arizona's hard-fought gubernatorial primary has yet to be called. But Trump-backed former local TV anchor Kari Lake, an election denier and conspiracy theorist, won her Arizona gubernatorial primary against a GOP establishment-backed primary rival and has a real shot at becoming governor. Lake has continued to undermine voters' faith in her state's election system, saying the day before the primary that "if we don't win, there's some cheating going on."

Michigan had a similar outcome. Rep. Peter Meijer, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after he incited the Capitol riot, lost a close race to Trump-endorsed candidate John Gibbs, who has pushed QAnon-linked conspiracies including a claim that Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman participated in satanic rituals. And Trump-backed election denier Tudor Dixon handily won her gubernatorial primary, though her win came against a group of even more extreme GOP candidates. That included Ryan Kelley, who's facing charges for his role in the Jan. 6 riot—and who (shock of shocks) refused to concede after finishing a distant fourth place in the race, claiming it was rigged and a "predetermined outcome."

Speaking of loser election deniers denying their election losses, Colorado county clerk Tina Peters ended up coughing up the quarter-million dollars she needed for a recount to determine that she lost her primary for Colorado secretary of state last month. That recount wrapped up Thursday and—you guessed it—she still lost by more than 88,000 votes (and actually lost ground by three net votes). That's a lot of money to be told once again that you lost by double digits, but hey, you do you, Tina.

There were a few exceptions to Team Trump's dominance this week—Washington GOP Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, who voted to impeach, might survive their Trump-fueled primary challenges when all the votes are counted (though as of press time, Beutler and her opponent, election denier and great replacement theory advocate Joe Kent, are headed down to the wire).

We're not quite done yet, though. Next week, Wisconsin will be the last big swing state to hold primaries. And after messing with Wisconsin GOP Assembly Leader Robin Vos for almost two years, Trump finally decided to endorse his opponent. Vos backed Trump's attempt to undermine voters' trust in the election by authorizing a wild, partisan "review" of the 2020 election. But that wasn't enough for Trump, who also demanded Vos decertify Biden's win in the state, and threw a tantrum when Vos pointed out he couldn't actually do that. It turns out that when you choose to spawn election lies, you can't be half-pregnant.

Oh, and speaking of pregnancy… Vos' opponent wants to ban birth control, too.

Kari Lake, Republican gubernatorial candidate for Arizona, waves a sledgehammer during an Election Night Party in Scottsdale, Arizona, US, on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022. (Caitlin O'Hara/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Textual tension

The Department of Defense and the Army revealed in court filings this week that they actually don't have former senior Trump administration officials' text messages from Jan. 6 because the government "wiped" the officials' phones after they left. Whoops!

American Oversight, a watchdog group currently in a FOIA lawsuit with the Pentagon, said those officials whose records they're seeking include then-Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. Given that Miller himself told the Jan. 6 committee that he was compelled to call a senior Italian official to investigate whether an Italian defense contractor switched U.S. election votes from Trump to Biden via satellite, we can only guess what's in those missing texts.

The Pentagon claimed in its filing that erasing the data after employees leave the agencies is standard procedure, but either way, American Oversight sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding the Justice Department "investigate DOD's failure to preserve the text messages."

The news of the missing Pentagon texts comes less than a week after Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin demanded Garland take over the investigation into the missing text messages of former top officials at the Department of Homeland Security as well as Secret Service agents, after a July 29 Washington Post report that DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari didn't press for DHS leadership to explain why they didn't preserve the records.

Ain't Patricks' day

Just weeks after he testified before the House Jan. 6 committee, the Justice Department subpoenaed Trump White House general counsel Pat Cipollone in its investigation of the events leading up to the Capitol riot. As the New York Times reports, Cipollone is the highest-ranking White House official to be called to testify before a grand jury investigating Jan. 6. (We know there are at least two grand juries investigating, according to the Times.)

Cipollone, you'll recall, gave a taped deposition to the Jan. 6 committee last month after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson invoked him during her bombshell testimony in June. In one particularly enlightening exchange replayed during the July 12 hearing, Cipollone said "Kraken" lawyer Sidney Powell's grand scheme to seize voting machines was "a terrible idea for the country" with "no legal authority" and "not the way we do things in the United States."

It's not clear how much Cipollone has to give the grand jury that he didn't already give to the Jan. 6 committee. But the insight from GOP Rep. and Jan. 6. committee member Adam Kinzinger is that "this is probably bad for former President Trump." Thank you, congressman.

On Wednesday, the hits kept coming, as CNN reported that former White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin was subpoenaed for documents and testimony. Philbin has also previously spoken with the House Jan. 6 committee.

"The Schumer-Manchin deal won't save the Democrats. But unhinged GOP candidates might."

— Republican strategist Karl Rove, arguing that the Democrats' prospects in the midterms don't hinge on passing their historic climate-energy-tax plan but rather on Republicans' ability to sound normal.

On Georgia's mind

Lindsey Graham is fighting his subpoena in Fulton County DA Fani Willis' investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the election in Georgia, and to do so, Graham has apparently brought back a Very Special Guest: Trump's first White House counsel, Don McGahn.

As CBS notes, McGahn helped the White House "sherpa" Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch through the Supreme Court confirmation process; Graham was perhaps Kavanaugh's most forceful defender on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he won't shut up about Kavanaugh to this day.

As Todd mentioned last week, Willis suffered an embarrassing setback in her investigation into Trump's efforts to persuade Georgia officials to just hand him the state's electoral votes, when a judge barred her from investigating state Sen. Burt Jones, one of the fake electors there, after she hosted a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent.

Willis is keeping her cards in the Georgia investigation close. She told Atlanta NBC affiliate 11 Alive this week that she's "at least 60 days away" from determining whether to subpoena Trump himself but that she's "very hopeful that we will wrap up work in that case by the end of this year."

Cellphone tango

Almost immediately after conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' lawyer's' metaphorical jellybeans fell out of his briefcase and it was revealed in open court that he'd given Sandy Hook lawyers essentially a copy of Jones' cellphone, the Jan. 6 committee asked if they could also see that, please.

Mark Bankston, an attorney for the Sandy Hook parents in the first of three trials determining the damages Jones owes them, confirmed in court Thursday that the committee investigating the Capitol riot requested the records. Jones' lawyer, Federico Reynal, filed an emergency motion Thursday asking a judge to order Bankston to destroy the phone data. (For more on this incredibly surreal trial, please follow our colleague Anna Merlan's coverage.)

Rolling Stone reported Wednesday after the revelation that the committee was planning to subpoena Jones' emails and text messages. Jones himself testified in January and later said he took the Fifth Amendment "almost 100 times."