Jonathan P. Baird

Even the most cynical must stand in awe before Donald Trump’s latest attempted grift. Trump is suing the IRS for $10 billion. He is suing because someone leaked his tax information to the public in 2019 and 2020 showing that he paid almost no income taxes for years.

The crazy thing is that he is both plaintiff and defendant in the case. He, his sons and the Trump organization are the plaintiffs and his appointees control the IRS, the defendant. They are negotiating among themselves how much taxpayers will pay for someone disclosing that Trump didn’t pay taxes. Never has not paying taxes been so lucrative.

That swindle is not surprising when you consider the overall Trump financial picture. He has primarily become a crypto entity. Monetizing the presidency has been his full-time gig. He and his family have netted $4 billion in his second term. Wealthy donors and large corporations give him hundreds of millions for the proposed ballroom and his vanity triumphal arch. Others who seek favors or pardons spend millions on his crypto products.

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother and national security advisor to the president of the United Arab Emirates, purchased a half-billion dollar stake in the Trump family’s crypto fund, World Liberty Financial. They received access to the most advanced AI chips in return.

That was followed by Sheikh Tahnoon announcing that another investment company, MGX, was buying a $2 billion stake in Binance, a crypto firm, using the cryptocurrency provided by Trump’s firm, World Liberty Financial. The deal would net the Trump family up to $80 million a year in interest.

The Pentagon just awarded a $24 million contract to a robotics startup tied to Eric Trump, the son. That Trump serves as the chief strategy advisor of the firm. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) asked “Is the Pentagon just a cash machine for Trump’s kids now?”

While the corruption itself is astounding, what is often missed is the other side of the corruption equation. The corruption has negative consequences for everyone else. It is the people who get scammed. When the rich oligarchs make out like bandits, everyone else is left in a struggle for survival. Human needs are neglected as the rich line their pockets. I submit that Trump’s tax cut, his major achievement, only benefited himself and his rich allies and friends. Hiring for jobs is the lowest it has been since 2020.

The whole matter of the crisis of affordability remains unaddressed. Nothing is done to tackle that crisis. The American people face layoffs, flat wages, inflation, exploding rents, outrageous gas price increases, unaffordable health care and rocketing food prices. Trump says we are living in the golden age but actually it is the golden age of fraud. People are right to feel the system is rigged but it is not being rigged by immigrants or minorities. Those groups have little power.

The parallel to Victor Orban and Hungary could not be clearer. MAGA and the Far Right have touted the Orban model for years. I remember Tucker Carlson broadcasting from Budapest on FOX for a full week in 2021. Then he produced a documentary praising Orban and his regime to the skies. Hungary was supposed to be right wing utopia and the defender of Western civilization.

Orban did many of the things Trump has done or tried to do. He stacked the courts, replaced civil servants with loyalists, tilted the electoral system in his favor and took over much of the mass media undermining media pluralism. He scapegoated immigrants and George Soros and promoted vicious anti-immigration policies. He did some things Trump has not been able to do like rewrite Hungary’s constitution and shut down political opposition.

People in Hungary were fed up with the corruption and economic stagnation. During his 16 year tenure as Hungary’s strong man, Orban funneled billions in EU funds and state contracts to a close circle of elites and family members. Orban built a variety of projects like a family mansion, a golf course, a stadium and roundabouts that were unneeded but they were a vehicle to make his family and friends ultra-wealthy.

He drained critical investment money that could have gone to schools and hospitals. Orban made Hungary both the poorest and the most corrupt state in the European Union. He was the poster boy for illiberal democracy. Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation that authored Project 2025, had described Hungary as the model for conservative statecraft.

Peter Magyar, the victorious Hungarian opposition leader, successfully made the link between Orban’s corruption and the impoverishment of the Hungarian people. We need to make that same connection between Trump family corruption and the Trump regime’s oblivious response to the unaffordability of necessities.

While not addressing the economy, Trump predictably will blame his usual list: trans people, Somalis, and anyone else he can scapegoat. Trump’s routine is pretty old and repetitive at this point. You can know what he will do before he does it. He will say everything that has happened in the last 15 months is the greatest. The 2020 election results should “be permanently wiped from the books and be of no further force and effect”.

The Hungarian people did show us a very useable roadmap for how to defeat an authoritarian leader. We need a united front against fascism that stretches from the far right to the far left. Everyone who supports democracy needs to unite to oppose the Trump regime. I am making the assumption there will be elections in 2026 and 2028. No president has the authority to cancel that. Whomever the Democrats ultimately choose for 2028 needs to be supported to defeat the MAGA fascists.

As a Jewish person and as a democratic socialist, I have long been a student of fascist movements. It was the failure to build a broad coalition of opposition that allowed Hitler and the German Nazis to come to power. Left parties warred among themselves rather than recognizing the greater threat. Hungary shows the way to defeat fascism in America.