Hungary's New PM Just Showed Us What Courage Looks Like. Where's Ours?
Hypothetically, if I was elected President, here are the opening salvos of restoration
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A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece laying out what the next president needs to do from the moment they take office — a methodical, principled unwinding of the institutional damage Trump has done. The response was overwhelming. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
Then something happened this week that made me want to go further. Here is the video I reference in the paid subscriber video of Magyar calling out public tv CLICK HERE
Hungary just elected a new prime minister. His name is Péter Magyar, and if you haven’t been paying attention to what’s happening in Budapest, you should be — because it’s a masterclass in what courage looks like the morning after you win.
Magyar didn’t waste a single hour. On day one, he announced he was suspending state media news operations — shuttering the propaganda apparatus that Viktor Orbán had spent 16 years weaponizing against his own people. He called on Hungary’s president, the heads of the country’s two highest courts, the chief prosecutor, and the leaders of its audit and media authorities to resign. He called them what they were: “puppets.” And he said it out loud, on camera, in public, before the balloons had even been swept off the floor.
He vowed to pursue everyone who had “plundered” Hungary. He recommitted his country to Europe, and to truth.
I watched all of this and I thought: that’s what it looks like when someone actually means it.
So let me be specific about what I mean. Because “restore the institutions” is easy to say. Anybody can say it. Here is, item by item, what I would do if I were president on day one. Not in a speech. Not in principle. Actually do.
The Symbols First — Because Symbols Matter
Walk into the White House and the first order of business, before any briefing, before any phone call, before any executive order: restore Joe Biden’s portrait. Trump ripped it down as a petty act of dominance on his first day back. We put it back up on ours. Simple. Clean. Immediate. The message it sends is the point.
While we’re at it — the “Walk of Fame” situation. The portraits, the displays, the institutional tributes that Trump inserted or removed for personal political reasons get corrected. We are not a monarchy. The White House is not a personal gallery.
Every federal building, facility, and piece of public infrastructure that had Trump’s name slapped on it — the Trump Kennedy Center, any highway, any plaza, any landmark attached by political decree rather than legitimate honor — gets renamed. Not with drama. Not with a press conference. It just happens, because it should never have happened in the first place. Any unfinished monument that was ordered built to his specifications gets cancelled. Any that were completed get renamed. The American people paid for those buildings. They belong to the American people.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about tasking the Treasury with phasing out Trump-signed currency through the normal circulation system. I want to be clearer about something: I’m not talking about a mass recall. Bills wear out. The Fed replaces them constantly. What I’m talking about is a deliberate, intentional exchange program — any bill signed by Donald Trump can be brought to a bank and swapped for clean, unsigned currency. We make the option available. We make the statement. And then we let the bills gradually disappear the way they naturally would, except faster.
Money is a symbol of collective trust. You do not get to sign your name across collective trust and keep it there forever.
The Jet
Qatar gave Donald Trump a $400 million Boeing 747. The American taxpayer was then asked to spend a billion dollars converting it into Air Force One. And Trump plans to keep it when he leaves office — a foreign government’s gift to a sitting U.S. president, financed by American tax dollars, just his.
Day one: that aircraft is declared the property of the American people. It is seized, reclaimed, and either sold with proceeds returned to the Treasury or scrapped entirely. No foreign government gets to give the President of the United States a $400 million jet. That is not a gift. That is a down payment on influence. We are not for sale.
Security Details and the Rules Trump Made
This one is elegant in its simplicity. Trump established rules about security details for former administration members. Those rules now apply equally to everyone — including Trump and members of his own administration. Security details for all former administration members get reviewed and granted according to the standards Trump himself set. No more, no less. The rules are the rules. Especially his.
The Department of Justice Does Its Job
The Attorney General is directed to investigate — through normal, lawful channels, with due process and full transparency — any credible accusation of willfully violating civil rights or the Constitution, within applicable statutes of limitations, regardless of party or title.
Not a witch hunt. Not retribution. A job. The job the DOJ is supposed to do. If the evidence supports prosecution, we prosecute. If it doesn’t, we say so publicly. The point is that powerful people are not exempt from the same laws that govern everyone else. That has to stop being a radical statement.
January 6th
I was there. I voted to certify the election. I voted to impeach Donald Trump. And I have watched this country spend years being gaslit about what happened on that day.
Day one, I give a national address. Not angry. Not political. Just factual. Here is what happened. Here is what we know. Here is what the evidence shows. And here is why it matters that we’re honest about it. Not for the people who already know — for the people who’ve been told, over and over, that it was a tourist visit or a false flag or somehow the other side’s fault.
And then I formally call on every public school in America to include January 6th in its civics curriculum. Not as propaganda. As history. As a stress test this country barely survived. Our kids deserve to know what happened.
Congress Reads the Constitution
I call on Congress — both chambers, publicly — to read the Constitution aloud on the floor. The whole thing. Together. On camera. Not as a stunt. As a reminder. As a reset. Because somewhere along the way, a lot of people who swore an oath to it stopped treating it like it meant something.
Foreign Governments Who Thought They Could Buy Us
A State Department committee is formed with a single mission: investigate every foreign government that engaged in financial dealings with Trump or his associates during his time in office. Every country that booked a Trump hotel to curry favor, invested in a Trump property, fast-tracked a trademark, or handed him a jumbo jet. Every one. Including those that agreed to imprison deportees.
And for any foreign government that thought it could violate our democratic norms — interfere in our elections, manipulate our institutions, undermine our alliances — there are consequences. Diplomatic, financial, legal where the evidence supports it. Russian sanctions are fully restored, immediately, without negotiation.
The message to every government on earth is this: we noticed what you did. We are not going to pretend otherwise. And you will be held to account.
A Public Address on the Corruption
When the investigations are underway and the evidence is gathered — I give an address to the American people. Not a campaign speech. A reckoning. Here is what was done. Here is what we found. Here is what it cost you. And here is what we are doing about it.
This matters because one of the most insidious things about the last four years was the sheer volume of it — scandal after scandal, norm after norm broken, until people got numb. I want to un-numb them. Not out of anger. Out of accountability. The American people have a right to know what was done in their name.
Why All of This
I keep thinking about Péter Magyar standing up in Budapest and calling things by their names. Calling the state media what it was — a propaganda machine. Calling the officials who enabled Orbán what they were — puppets. Not elegantly. Not with caveats. Just plainly, clearly, on the record.
There is something almost radical about that kind of directness right now.
I wrote a few weeks ago that none of this is about revenge. I meant it then and I mean it now. This is about the cold, hard truth that a country where the rules only apply to some people is not a country — it’s a racket. A working-class American who plays by the rules, pays their taxes, doesn’t cheat, doesn’t steal — and then watches the most powerful man in the country do all of those things and face zero consequences — what does that tell them about the system they’ve been faithfully working within their whole life?
It tells them it’s rigged.
You don’t fix that cynicism with hope posters. You fix it by actually doing the things I just listed, methodically, transparently, by the book. You restore Biden’s portrait. You take the name off the Kennedy Center. You seize the jet. You direct the DOJ to do its job. You tell the truth about January 6th. You restore the Russian sanctions. You hold foreign governments accountable.
And then — and this is the part I really want people to hear — you move on. You don’t build a monument to the damage. You don’t spend four years relitigating everything. You correct what needs to be corrected, you hold accountable who needs to be held accountable, and then you govern. You look forward. You build something better.
We don’t do this to punish Trump. We do it because principle has to mean something. We do it because the next person who wants to try this — and there will be a next person — needs to look at what happened and understand that this country has a memory, and a spine, and a rule of law that applies to everyone.
Even presidents. Especially presidents.
We built this country once. We can restore it again.
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