Trump to meet with Orbán in Florida after NATO summit

Former President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary will meet on Thursday following the NATO summit in Washington, just one week after Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, two people familiar with the arrangements confirmed.

The meeting will take place at the former president’s private club and home at Mar-a-lago in Palm Beach, Florida, said the people, who were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak.

Trump and Orbán have maintained a close relationship for years as the Hungarian prime minister has been a favorite foreign leader among conservatives. Orbán visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago this spring, shortly after he endorsed the former U.S. president's bid to return to the White House. The Hungarian prime minister has also spoken at CPAC and at the Heritage Foundation, and he has visited Trump at his other club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

But while Orbán — who has described his own governing style as an “illiberal democracy” — has gained popularity with Trump and the right in the United States for his crackdown on immigration and nationalist rhetoric, his meeting with Putin and embrace of autocrats has raised concerns among E.U. and NATO leaders and has been criticized by the Biden administration.

U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman lashed out at Orbán recently, saying that no other U.S. ally has so “overtly and tirelessly” campaigned for the Republican candidate.

This week, Orbán praised Trump in an interview with Axel Springer media outlets, which owns POLITICO, as “the man of peace,” and he predicted there is a “very, very high chance” Biden will not win the U.S. election.

News of the meeting was first reported by Bloomberg.

The sitdown with Trump is the latest in a series of meetings that the Hungarian leader embarked on immediately after Hungary took over the rotating Council of the European Union presidency in a self-proclaimed mission to bring "peace" to Ukraine.

In his meetings with Putin, Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy and China's Xi Jinping, Orbán has been trying to negotiate peace without consulting EU leaders, triggering a wave of condemnation. Hungary was again reprimanded on Wednesday during a meeting of EU ambassadors.