Trump, Orbán meeting at Mar-a-Lago after NATO summit

Former President Trump will meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán following the NATO summit in Washington, a source familiar with the plans confirmed.

Orbán will meet with Trump on Thursday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., nearly a week after the Hungarian leader came under fire for his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the source confirmed to The Hill.

Trump and Orbán have maintained friendly relations over the past few years, and last week, Orbán predicted Trump will win against President Biden in November, noting a “change would be good for the world.”

The Hungarian leader, in an interview with Axel Springer media outlets this month, described Trump as a self-made man” with a “different approach to everything.”

“He is the man of peace,” Orbán said of Trump, per Politico. “Under his four-year term he did not initiate a single war, and he did a lot in order to create peace in old conflicts in very complicated areas of the world.”

Many conservatives in the U.S. have increasingly embraced the Hungarian autocrat, who has delivered keynote speeches during Conservative Political Action Conference events, one of which was hosted last year in Budapest, Hungary.

Thursday’s meeting comes just months after the former president hosted Orbán at Mar-a-Lago last March. That meeting sparked criticism from Biden, who argued Orbán is “looking for dictatorship.”

Orbán has been widely criticized for his relationship with Russia amid its war with Ukraine. Ahead of his visit with Putin earlier this month, the leader met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, saying he was pitching a “a deadline-bound cease-fire, that could provide an opportunity to speed up peace negotiations.”

Following his trip to Moscow, Orbán flew to Beijing and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping where he described China as a stabilizing force amid global turbulence and applauded the country’s “constructive and important” peace initiatives, The Associated Press reported.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared to suggest a meeting between Trump and Orbán would contradict Ukraine’s interests, stating Thursday that, “The U.S. position — the Biden administration position — is nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” per the AP.

“Whatever adventurism that is being undertaken without Ukraine’s consent or support, you know, is not something that’s consistent with our policy, the foreign policy of the United States,” Sullivan told reporters, adding he “can’t speculate as to what Orbán is up to exactly,” the AP added.

Brett Samuels contributed.