BUDAPEST — George W. Bush dodged it. Barack Obama refused it. But on Monday President Trump will grant Viktor Orban, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, his first private audience with a president at the White House since he met Bill Clinton there in 1998.

Back then, Mr. Orban was a young centrist who praised Mr. Clinton for helping Hungary to escape Russian influence by joining NATO, but today he is a doyen of right-wing nationalists on multiple continents. He has enfeebled democratic institutions, strived to achieve a Hungarian ethnic homogeneity and pulled his nation closer to the opponents of American influence, Russia and China.

His welcome at the White House is seen by Mr. Trump’s critics as emblematic of the president’s preference for strongman leaders who seek to undermine the liberal international order.

“This visit is par for the course in terms of this administration’s interest in aligning itself with autocrats and would-be autocrats,” said Robert G. Berschinski, a former deputy assistant secretary of state under Mr. Obama, now a senior vice president at Human Rights First, a watchdog group.