Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left podcast.

The most important thing to understand about authoritarian and dictatorial governance is that it is neither efficient nor competent, contrary to the myth.

The problem lies with the need to hire people based on their unquestioning loyalty,

rather than any kind of demonstrated ability to do the jobs they're tasked with. The results are,

unsurprisingly, chaos. For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our

top takes in about 50 minutes today includes

the Tom Hartman program, The Dig, the Muckrake Political Podcast, the Brian Lera Show,

No Lie with Brian Taylor Cohen, AmeriCast, the Aspen Institute, and Farron Balanced.

Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there will be more in four

sections. Section A, the lineup, section B, the playbook, section C, global references, and section

D cracks in authority. This is a former Hungarian minister of member of parliament, excuse me, his name is Gabor Shearing.

And he notes, he wrote an essay for Politico.

And he says, there are numerous similarities between Orban and Trump.

You know, both are former presidents who lost elections and then returned to power. And then both are strident culture warriors. And he says,

Orban deployed both the hardware and the software of autocracy or authoritarianism or

oligarchy. The software is Orban portraying himself, even though arguably he was a member of the intellectual

elite, George Soros paid for him to go to college in England. But he portrays himself as a foxy

outsider who is a populist hero of the working class. And the same. They also share an intense platform.

Orban has said that immigrants are polluting the blood of Hungarians.

Trump says they're poisoning the blood of Americans.

You know, just pure, unadulterated racism.

And Orban and Trump, and they are demonizing immigrants as a way, he says,

...