As people are going to figure out in about seven seconds, your accent is not Hungarian.

So what brings a guy like you to a country like this?

Well, I see the political future of conservatism in America is being worked out here in Hungary in Budapest.

And that's fascinating to me.

I first came to Budapest around 2018 on a book tour, but also I came a year later to do research for my book, Live Not by Lies,

which is about the message that people who survive communism in Europe, Soviet communism, the message they have for us in the west today

about the new softer totalitarianism that they see emerging.

And I thought it was really exaggerated when they first started telling me this about, I don't know, eight, nine years ago,

but the more I listened to them, I'm talking about America, these immigrants.

The more I listened to them, the more I realized they were seeing something that was completely oblivious.

We Americans were oblivious too.

And so I came to travel throughout the former Soviet block, Hungary, Poland, other countries, to talk to those who had stayed behind and were dissidents,

to find out what do we need to know.

And they're so sensible in this part of the world, and they really know to use a phrase what time it is.

So I thought, you know what, I want to live here and learn what I can from these people and try to bring the lessons that I've learned about politics and about culture and the fight we're in,

to try to make it better known to my own people back in America.

Plus it's just a great place to live.

Well, the view ain't bad from up here.

And what is it specifically though about Hungarians or Hungarian culture that seems to be leading this?

Because there's obviously plenty of other countries bordering right here that maybe aren't doing it quite as well.

There seems to be something happening right here.

The difference is Victor Orbán, the Prime Minister here.

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