Warren Davidson has been representing the 8th Congressional District of the state of Ohio in the United States House of Representatives since 2016, as a member of the Republican Party. Prior to taking office, he served 12 years in the US Army, between 1988 and 2000. He was one of the distinguished speakers at CPAC Hungary 2025, where he also kindly gave an exclusive interview to our site.
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Ohio, your home state, used to be the quintessential swing state. Bush won it twice, then Obama won it twice. Now it’s a safe red state. What do you think precipitated this change? You lived through that, so what do you think made Ohio such a safe Republican state in the past 8–12 years?
Yeah, I think part of it was that Barack Obama was just so radical. I mean, people in a way wanted to embrace him and hope that he was really who he said he was in 2008. I mean, in 2008, he said he was opposed to same-sex marriage. He campaigned on things, and then he took office and went in a radically left direction. He didn’t make race relations better, he intentionally made race relations worse. He did promise to go on a ‘war on coal’, but Eastern Ohio has a lot of coal. You had a war on energy, and Eastern Ohio has a lot of natural gas; there are a lot of jobs in these sectors. Barack Obama changed what he said his values were, and he implemented policies that hurt Ohio.
So that was a setback for Democrats. But then Donald Trump launched his campaign, and Donald Trump’s campaign was perfectly calibrated for Ohio. Honestly, the Republicans and Democrats agreed on global trade for a long time. And there were people like Ross Perot in America, who said: ‘You are going to hear a giant sucking sound if you implement these global trade policies.’ We certainly felt that in Ohio. So with the benefit of hindsight, Republicans and Democrats weren’t conceding what Donald Trump campaigned on, which is that you have to fix our trade policies. You have to secure our border. You have to protect our values. We saw all those under attack in Ohio. And Donald Trump’s message is exactly what people there believe and share deeply. So they don’t just like the messaging, it’s the root of what people in Ohio believe.
Right now, the sitting Vice President, JD Vance, is from your home state, Ohio.
He’s from my congressional district as well.
Oh, yeah. Have you worked with him personally in Congress when he was serving as a Senator? Did you have any personal meetings with him?
Yeah, I’ve known him for almost 10 years now, so he’s a friend of mine. We’ve texted, met, and hung out together.
Did he stand out as a special political talent to you when he first took office?
Oh, even before he took office. He wasn’t yet an elected official at that time, he was just a promising guy. People who knew his background compared his background to mine. Both of us had hillbilly ancestors that came to Ohio. A lot of Ohio, that’s really what people did. They came from Kentucky or Tennessee, Appalachia, and took jobs in factories in Ohio. So we had a similar kind of experience. He enlisted in the Marines, I enlisted in the Army. So people that knew him said: ‘Oh, you remind me of JD,’ that’s how we got connected, people just connected us. I think he had tons of talent from the get-go, he was writing his book, Hillbilly Elegy. Then, when he took office as a Senator, he clearly was one of Donald Trump’s big defenders, including a sort of realism-based foreign policy, a non-interventionist foreign policy that isn’t isolationist, but it does protect America’s interests.
This is your first time in Hungary, right?
This is my first visit to Hungary, yes.
The mainstream media in the West often portrays Viktor Orbán as an authoritarian. What has your experience been? Does what you’ve seen here in Hungary so far contradict that narrative?
Look, they also say that about Donald Trump, but let’s not forget, they have said that about George W Bush. I mean, it’s pretty obvious George W Bush isn’t an authoritarian or isn’t even conservative, really. So the media narrative really isn’t based in reality. It’s just the same kind of attacks. It is a toolkit that they roll out on everybody. And the reality is: the proof is in the results, right? And you look, you see freedom here, you see freedom defended here in Hungary, you see people who feel safe. I was talking with Jewish people who come here and feel safe to speak Hebrew in Budapest, and they go to capitals like London and Paris, and they won’t wear the kippah, they won’t speak Hebrew, because they don’t feel safe there.
A little bit of a contentious question at the end. The One Big Beautiful Bill: Do you think it will pass? And if yes, when will it pass?
Well, it got out of the House by a little bit. The big danger is that it promises that it’s going to save money in the future. But this Congress, the one that we’re in control of, actually spends more.
So, even in the most optimistic models, it eventually gets around to saving money, but that’s only if everyone else in the future sticks to the plan. So I think that’s the problem that it’s going to have in the Senate is: Can we make sure that in this Congress, it actually reduces deficits? And part of the way to do that is to get the DOGE cuts. And that’s where a lot of the base, the red-meat Republican base, is like, ‘Where are the DOGE cuts?’ They don’t necessarily have to be in the same bill, but if you put the package together, I think they do want Donald Trump to spend less money. And frankly, financial markets are saying the same. They’re looking at interest rates going up, and part of the election was about the economy. So we do have to deliver some kind of proof that we are going to be better on the economy if we’re going to stay in power.
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