These are not just kind words, but the product of the deep ties that have developed between the European far right and Trump’s Republican Party.

Chief among them is Orbán, 61, who has become an unlikely darling of Trump and other Republicans who host him and heed his political advice.

“Orbán is a model for Trump’s team,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor and author of the new book “Erasing History: How Fascists Are Rewriting the Past to Control the Future.” “They bring him in, they meet with him,” said Stanley, arguing that Orbán’s most attractive feature is that he “managed to stay in power” for 14 years, which made him the longest-serving leader of the European Union.

Orbán did this, According to researchersby passing laws that restrict judicial independence; cluttering state institutions and organizations with party loyalists; and creating a pro-government media environment by threatening fines or suspensions for “unbalanced” or “immoral” news.

His grip on power has become such that the European Parliament calls his rule an “elective autocracy.” And from that platform, he portrayed refugees as a threat to Christian culture, describing immigrants as “poison” and Muslims as “invaders,” and actually introduced so-called anti-pedophilia laws that conflated this crime with LGBTQI+ issues.

It’s a platform he says he increasingly exports to Republicans.

“We have tapped into President Donald Trump’s team’s program-writing system and have deep involvement there,” he said at a conference in July. Trump, meanwhile, described Orbán in January as “a very great leader” and “a very strong man.”

I will send a message. By the way I could say this

When the Hungarian visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in March, President Joe Biden accused his Hungarian counterpart of “seeking dictatorship.”

NBC News asked the Trump team to comment on these criticisms, as well as their connections to far-right parties in Europe.

The far-right label is rejected by Orbán’s Hungarian party, Fidesz.

“If the left wants to paint us as far-right on illegal immigration, all I can say is we are far-right on illegal immigration, so the left is very wrong because they promote lawlessness.” Fidesz MP László said there were limits.

This isn’t just about platitudes among leaders.

Danube Institute, a think tank affiliated with Orbán developed bonds The project is with the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, which is leading the 2025 policy roadmap. Trump rejected the 900-page plan to reorganize sections of politics and society along far-right lines, even though some of his former aides were involved in the draft.

However, Trump has publicly supported mass deportations, said he would use the legal system to punish political opponents, and threatened to deploy the military and National Guard against leftists whom he described as “the enemy within.”

Trump and his team have denied he is a fascist, and he described himself last month as “the opposite of a Nazi.”

The prospect of a new alliance between these trans-Atlantic political partners is extremely worrying for independent experts, activists and political opponents.

During Trump’s first term, powerful figures like German leader Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron presented themselves as rational, mainstream counterbalances to the president’s most norm-shattering outbursts. Now Merkel is long gone and Macron is seriously weakened.

Europe’s new political topography has shifted to the right; Here, Wilders called for the “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands, the Austrian Freedom Party wants to ensure the “return” of Austrian citizens with immigrant backgrounds, and the Brothers of Italy party also uses this method. fascist, Benito Mussolini era slogan: “God, family, homeland.”

While the party’s leader, Meloni, has softened his image internationally by strengthening ties with Biden and the EU, at home he oversaw a controversial program to process immigrants in Albania, declared his personal opposition to abortion and supported anti-surrogacy laws that critics say are discriminatory. gay couples.

Now Trump’s election means that Orbán will be much less isolated and may even become the political bloc’s conduit to Trump.

“There is a learning process that the Trump movement is doing with these people,” said Stanley, the Yale professor. “Their use of Orbán is very, very effective and very smart.”

Alexander Smith reported from London and Carlo Angerer reported from Munich, Germany.