Bipolar: Orban speaks to the state of the world

On May 20, Hungarian leader Viktor Orban told a special meeting of US conservatives that friendly media outlets were key to the rise to power as well as retention of it.

The word “friendly” is mine. Mr Orban said the following: “Have your own media.”

For a journalist this is just as dispiriting as a US Supreme Court judge’s reaction to Donald Trump’s 2018 label of “Obama judge” for one of their cohort.

President Trump described US district judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco as an “Obama judge when he blocked an executive order that barred asylum for immigrants who enter the country illegally from Mexico. The presidential slander led US Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts to respond pretty heatedly (pretty heatedly for a chief justice, that is).

In late 2018, Chief Justice Roberts said in a statement released by the court: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” And he concluded: “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing thei…