MSNBC’s Hasan: DeSantis Is ‘American Orbán’

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said Friday on “Deadline” that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was an authoritarian like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

Hasan said, “It is American autocracy, and the most important point is that this is not unique to America. This is a global movement. And DeSantis and Trumps are borrowing and inspiring from others abroad. You look at their plan to register bloggers. It is straight out of the Kremlin. The Russian government has done similar things, as many people have pointed out on social media today. Asking journalists and bloggers to register is out of Viktor Orbán in Hungary.

He continued, “If you look at Orbán in Hungary, he secured his power with a kind of moral panic over children and sex, by muzzling universities and by cracking down on the free press. Sound familiar? This is the DeSantis playbook. This is the Orbán playbook. This is the attack on the media. The attack on the black voting rights, the attack on libraries, the attack on college professors and school teachers and gay teachers and trans kids and women’s abortion rights, on Disney, on free enterprise that is what DeSantis is doing.”

Hasan added, “The hypocrisy is blatant as it is cynical and galling. And that he’s an American Orbán should actually really petrify us given that he could be our next president.”

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