BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Former President Donald Trump made way during his Debate with Vice President Kamala Harris to express the mutual admiration he shares for Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s autocratic leader who has drawn closer to Russia and China and become a thorn in the side of his allies.

“They call him a strong man. He is a tough and smart man,” Trump said of Orbán in response to Harris’ claim that the world’s leaders are “laughing at” the former president.

“Look, Viktor Orbán said it. He said, ‘The most respected and most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president,'” Trump said.

Why is Orbán popular with conservatives?

Orbán, a right-wing populist and the longest-serving head of state in the European Union, is an icon to some US conservatives for what he called “illiberal democracy”, These include some of the EU’s strictest restrictions on immigration And LGBTQ+ rights.

He also went hard against the press and justice in the former communist Central European country and has been accused by the EU of violating the rule of law and democratic standards, while at the same time vigorously Striving for ever closer relations with Beijing and Moscowwho are viewed as enemies by its allies in the NATO military alliance.

Yet despite the growing consensus in the West that Orbán has curtailed Hungary’s fundamental freedoms, Trump and his wing of the Republican Party have embraced him. While still in office in 2019, Trump hosted Orbán for a meeting in the Oval Office, alarming some lawmakers, while his former senior adviser Steve Bannon called the Hungarian president “Trump before Trump.”

The former president, as well as conservative figures such as Tucker Carlson, praised Orbán’s zero-tolerance stance on immigration – he built a double-decker fence along Hungary’s southern border in 2015 after hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly from Syria, fled to Europe.

They also praise Hungary’s efforts to boost its flagging birth rate through generous subsidies and low-interest loans for families wanting children. Orbán said the effort was aimed at avoiding having to rely on immigration to combat population decline.

“There are not enough Christian, white, traditional Europeans in Europe,” Orban said at a campaign rally in June. “Instead, there is a vacuum that is being filled by migrants.”

Good relations with Trump

Such views have made him popular with the Conservative Political Action Conference, which Events in the Hungarian capital Budapest over the past three years. In 2022, he received a standing ovation at a national CPAC event in Dallas, telling the cheering crowd: “We must reclaim the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find friends and allies in each other.”

The Hungarian president openly supported Trump’s candidacy in the November elections and boldly shared his claim that the Republican would be able to quickly end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Orbán generally maintains the best relations with the Russian president Vladimir Putin among all EU heads of state and governmenthas routinely blocked, delayed or diluted The EU is moving to support Kyiv and sanction Moscow over its war. He has consistently pushed for a ceasefire, but without detailing what this would mean for Ukraine’s statehood or territorial integrity or the potential security implications for Europe and the United States.

In July, Orbán met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s beach resort, and shared a photo of the two on social media with the caption: “We talked about ways to make peace. The good news of the day: He will solve it!”

On his own social media page, Trump posted: “Thank you Viktor. There must be PEACE, and fast.”

Some prominent Democrats did not miss Trump’s hugs for Orbán during the debate.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton referred to Orbán as “the democracy-destroying Hungarian dictator,” while Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, told MSNBC late Tuesday: “He was asked about a world leader who is on his side, and it was Orbán. My God, that’s all you need to know.”