BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Former President Donald Trump made room during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris to express the mutual admiration he shares with Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s autocratic leader who has aligned himself with Russia and China and become a thorn in the side of his allies.

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

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

Why is Orbán popular among conservatives?

Orbán, a right-wing populist and the longest-serving leader of the European Union, has become an icon to some American conservatives for defending what he calls “illiberal democracy,” which includes some of the EU’s toughest restrictions immigration And LGBTQ+ rights.

He has also taken strict action against the press and the judiciary in the former communist Central European country and accused by the EU of violating the norms of the rule of law and democracy, while at the same time vigorously the pursuit of ever-deepening ties with Beijing and Moscowwho were regarded as opponents by his allies in the NATO military alliance.

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

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

They also praise Hungary’s efforts to boost its declining birthrate by providing generous subsidies and low-interest loans to families planning to have children, an effort Orbán says is designed to avoid the need for immigration to address the declining population.

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

Cozy relations with Trump

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

The Hungarian leader has openly supported Trump’s candidacy for the November election and brazenly echoed Trump’s claim that Republicans can quickly end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Orbán, who is widely regarded as the man with the warmest relations with the Russian president Vladimir Putin among all EU leadershas routinely blocked, delayed or weakened EU attempts to help Kiev and punish Moscow for the war. He has consistently pushed for a ceasefire, but without going into detail about what it would mean for Ukraine’s statehood or territorial integrity, or the potential security implications for Europe and the United States.

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

On his own social media site, Trump posted: “Thank you Viktor. We need PEACE, and we need it fast.”

Trump’s embrace of Orbán during the debate did not go unnoticed by some prominent Democrats.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Hillary Clinton called Orbán “the democracy-killing Hungarian dictator,” while Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, told MSNBC on Tuesday night: “He was asked for one world leader to be with him, and that was Orbán. My God, that’s all you need to know.”