Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned that President Donald Trump wants to “model himself” after Russian dictator Vladimir Putin as she hailed the electoral loss of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a “defeat” for the “unholy alliance” of “autocrats and wannabe autocrats.”

Orbán, whose re-election bid drew endorsement from Trump, conceded defeat in Hungary’s prime ministerial race, bringing an end to his party’s 16-year hold on power on Sunday.

The vote followed a late push from Washington to bolster Orbán’s campaign that saw Vice President JD Vance travel to Budapest last week. Orbán’s defeat marked a significant moment for both the Trump administration and Moscow, which had viewed the Hungarian leader as a key strategic ally.

For Trump, Orbán had served as a reliable Eurosceptic voice within the bloc, while for Russia, his tenure proved consequential in shaping the EU’s response to the war in Ukraine, where he repeatedly delayed sanctions packages and financial aid measures.

Calling into MS NOW’s Morning Joe on Monday, Clinton hailed the defeat as one shared by Putin and Trump, arguing it was a “wake up call” for American voters:

What we have here is this really unholy alliance among autocrats and wannabe autocrats. And, you know, Viktor Orbán morphed from an anti-communist, anti-Russian young student leader in Hungary into a toady for, you know, Vladimir Putin. And, you know, this isn’t the first election that Putin interfered in, as I know very well, and it won’t be the last. But this was a resounding defeat for Putin. And what it should tell us is that given the chance, people will not tolerate the kind of oppression that Orbán was imposing on them.

Clinton argued that Orbán was “dominating the government” and judiciary in Hungary, as well as “strangling the free press” and “taking over the universities.”

Arguing a parallel with Trump, she added:

Some of that may sound very familiar to your viewers, and what we should be learning from this is that you cannot allow one man rule, because one man rule leads to corruption, it leads to oppression, it leads to reckless adventures like we’re seeing with Trump in Iran. It leads to a kind of destruction of democratic institutions.

And so I think this is a wake up call for Americans. I don’t care what you call yourself politically, if you are an American, you care about American democracy here in our 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, then we want to be independent of the kind of behavior that you see coming from Trump, which is an effort to model himself on Vladimir Putin.

“Viktor Orbán learned that the Hungarian people wouldn’t put up with that. And I certainly hope that we see that in the midterm and the next presidential election from American voters,” she concluded.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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