JB Pritzker Warns Trump Is Emulating Hungary's Orbán In US' 'Slide' Towards Authoritarianism

11 hours ago

At a Center for American Progress event on Tuesday, Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) was asked if the United States is undergoing a 'slide towards authoritarianism.'

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Transcript

00:00Just when you join the dots of the press under attack and the deportations, Trump effectively

00:08ignoring court orders, crackdowns on protests on university campuses, and the fear being

00:16instilled, the obeying in advance – I mean, how worried are you that this country is sliding

00:22towards authoritarianism?

00:23Well, I would commend you to listen to the last 10 minutes of my State of the State speech

00:30because I talked about that very thing.

00:35I am deeply concerned about the slide that we're in.

00:37And I mentioned the pogroms and the Holocaust because those are personal experiences, not

00:46the Holocaust.

00:47The pogroms are a family experience.

00:49I built the Holocaust Museum.

00:50I mean, I have grown up understanding that not just minorities, but large swaths of people

01:00can be under direct attack in an authoritarian regime, and they will use the majority, lie

01:07to the majority, use propaganda in order to foment an attack.

01:18That is currently the case.

01:22We're all seeing the well-orchestrated videos of the raids to take immigrants to this country,

01:34some of whom are legal immigrants to the United States, some of whom are U.S. citizens, to

01:39take them away and to justify it by saying, well, there are Venezuelan gang members, which

01:47I guarantee there are.

01:48And for God's sakes, let's take people who are violent criminals, convicted violent criminals,

01:54and let's remove them from this country if they are here and undocumented, right?

02:02But when you're doing a sweeping raid – and by the way, on day one, where did they come?

02:07Chicago.

02:08Who did they bring with them?

02:09Dr. Phil.

02:10I'm not exaggerating.

02:12They brought Dr. Phil to Chicago with his new online TV channel.

02:20And why did they do that?

02:23Because they wanted to get the most amount of attention to what they were doing, not

02:27because they wanted to effectuate actually going after violent criminals who are undocumented

02:32who should be deported, but rather they wanted people to see that they're doing something.

02:39And so they'll just take sweeping hundreds of people and take them out of the country.

02:43So look, you mentioned a lot of things, and defying court orders is a whole other topic

02:50of conversation.

02:51It's hugely important, again, what authoritarian regimes do.

02:55But here's the thing you all ought to do is, if you don't already – if you haven't

02:58already read about Orban in Hungary, go read about what he did steadily – not that slowly

03:06to put the noose around that country.

03:10And that – and you know, Donald Trump admires Orban.

03:15And I believe he and his team have learned from that and are replicating that.

JB Pritzker Warns Trump Is Emulating Hungary's Orbán In US' 'Slide' Towards Authoritarianism

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