He is, you know, up in the middle of the night posting weird stuff.

Well, he does sleep at cabinet meetings.

Yeah, he also sits at the cabinet meetings.

Exactly.

He gets his little cat nap at the cabinet meetings.

Welcome to the Mona Charon Show.

I am delighted you've joined us today.

This is a special edition of the show. We are having a

reunion of the beg-to-differ panel. So I'm delighted to welcome back. Damon Linker, who writes

the substack newsletter, Notes from the Middle Ground, Bill Galston of the Wall

Street Journal and Brookings Institution, and Linda Chavez, who is now vice chair of the

Renewed Democracy Initiative and the host of a new podcast called Older Wiser. Love that title, Linda. Welcome, one and all. It's great to see you guys.

Yeah, it's great to be back. We have a lot of ground to cover. Things have happened since we were last

together. So let's start with the good news. Over the weekend,

Victor Orban was dealt a decisive defeat. Bill, I'm going to start with you, the meaning of the

Orban loss in Hungary. First of all, you know, what happened was really stunning.

I had a party that didn't exist two years ago, led by a man who was part of Orban's government two years ago,

just one, depending on which metric you're looking at, between 53 and 54% of the popular vote, and between

136 and 138 seats in the 199 seat Hungarian legislature, more than two-thirds, and therefore

enough for this new party not only to win, but also to reverse some of the

noxious constitutional changes that Victor Orban made. What's its significance? Well, you know,

one part of the answer is that if you ignore the economic condition of your people, you know, if you allow

...