Former President Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee continued his embrace of autocratic leaders who are part of a global backlash against democratic traditions.

Orban has become an icon for some conservative populists because he stands up for what he calls illiberal democracy, full of restrictions on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. He has also cracked down on his country’s press and judiciary and reconfigured Hungary’s political system to keep his party in power while maintaining the closest relationship with Russia among European Union countries.

In the US, Trump’s allies in the Republican Party have embraced Orban’s approach. On Thursday, as foreign dignitaries toured Washington, DC, ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address, Orban skipped the White House and instead spoke at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that oversees the 2025 Project , about the attempt to create a government organization. body blueprint for a potential second Trump term.

Supporting families, combating illegal migration and standing up for the sovereignty of our nations. This is the common ground for cooperation between the conservative forces of Europe and the US, Orban wrote on social media platform

He then flew to Florida, where he met Trump late Friday afternoon at the former president’s beach complex, Mar-a-Lago. Orban posted to his Instagram account a video of him and his staff meeting Trump and his staff, and then of the prime minister walking through the complex and presenting Melania Trump with a giant bouquet of flowers.

In the video, Trump praised Orban to the crowd, prompting laughter: He is a non-controversial figure because he says, “This is the way it will be, and that is the end of it.” Right? He’s the boss.

The Trump campaign said late Friday that the two men discussed a wide range of issues affecting Hungary and the United States, including the paramount importance of strong and secure borders to protect each nation’s sovereignty.

Biden said of Trump during his campaign in Pennsylvania on Friday: “Do you know who he’s meeting today at Mar-a-Lago? Orban from Hungary, who has stated outright that he doesn’t think democracy works, he is looking for dictatorship.

I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it, Biden added.

Orban’s approach appeals to Trump’s breed of conservatives who have abandoned their embrace of limited government and free markets for a system that sides with their own ideology, said Dalibor Rohac, a fellow at the center-right American Enterprise Institute.

They want to use the tools of government to reward their friends and punish their opponents, which is what Orban has done, Rohac said.

The meeting also comes at a time when Trump has continued to embrace authoritarians from many ideological backgrounds. He praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Orbán’s government has responded, repeatedly praising the former president.

On Friday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto posted an online message from Florida praising Trump’s strength and suggesting the world would be more peaceful if he were still president.

If Donald Trump had been elected president of the United States in 2020, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, would not have broken out and the conflict in the Middle East would have been resolved much more quickly, he wrote.

Orbán has been Prime Minister of Hungary since 2010. The following year, his party, Fidesz, used its two-thirds majority in parliament to rewrite the country’s constitution. It changed the retirement age for judges, forcing hundreds into early retirement, and assigning responsibility for appointing new judges to a single political appointee, widely accused of acting on behalf of Fidesz.

Fidesz later wrote a new media law and established a nine-member council to serve as the country’s media regulator. All nine members were appointed by Fidesz, which media watchdogs say has facilitated a major decline in press freedom and plurality.

The country’s legislative lines have been redrawn to protect Fidesz members, and there are no longer major news outlets critical of Orbán’s government, making it almost impossible for his party to lose elections, analysts say.

Orban supported Trump’s re-election efforts and has had frosty relations with the Biden administration, which pointedly did not invite Hungary to a democracy summit it hosted after the president took office. Hungarian officials have accused Biden’s ambassador to Budapest, former human rights lawyer David Pressman, of interfering in internal government affairs.

Earlier this week, Hungary objected to Biden’s choice of a former Dutch prime minister as the new NATO commander, potentially delaying the appointment.

The Hungarian leader has also enthusiastically boosted Trump’s latest presidential campaign, posting a message encouraging Trump to keep fighting after being hit with the first of what would be four criminal cases against him last year. Last week, Orban declared that a victory for the former president would be the only serious chance to end the war in Ukraine.

A video of the Heritage appearance, posted by Orban’s political director, showed the prime minister speaking with Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur who ran for the Republican presidential nomination before dropping out and endorsing Trump. The Hungarian leader also met with Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser who remains a vocal ally of the ex-president and active in global populist circles.

Orbán’s visit this week comes after he signed a new national sovereignty law that punishes any foreign support for political actors in Hungary, part of the prime minister’s long-standing battle against the EU and international nonprofits that criticize its erosion of Hungarian democracy.

Orban puts up this huge barrier for anyone interfering in the Hungarian elections, but Orbans interferes in all kinds of elections in other countries, says Kim Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist and Hungary expert.

Orban is among a small group of conservative populist foreign leaders who have publicly aligned themselves with the American conservatives who tried to oust Biden in November. Last month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Argentine President Javier Milei spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington. Orban was a featured speaker at the 2022 CPAC event, after which he met Trump at the former president’s golf course in New Jersey.

Several conservative populists have won European elections in recent years, including in Italy and Sweden. But leaders in those countries have remained staunch opponents of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and have not fought with the EU government or taken steps that alarm democracy, as Orban has.

Scheppele said the parallels between Trump and Orban go beyond ideology. She noted that Orban is not very religious but has become a hero to Christian conservatives for his hardline positions, just like Trump.

The two men also face a similar electoral dilemma, she added.

They have the same problem, Scheppele said. How do you use a really solid base, which is not a real majority, at election time?

Associated Press writers Riccardi reported from Denver and Spike from Budapest. AP political writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.