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So Orban’s meeting with Trump is an important legitimizing moment for the global far right. “In normal times, he would be condemned by the occupant of the White House,” writes Vox’s Zack Beauchamp. “The fact that he isn’t shows just how serious the threat to democracy in the West is.”

The visit fits a wider Trumpian pattern: allying himself with authoritarian leaders, based on shared nationalistic, anti-immigrant and antidemocratic values. “In a way, it is the ultimate irony: The nationalists, the anti-globalists, the people who are skeptical of international laws and international organizations — they, too, now work together, across borders, for common causes,” The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum wrote recently. Trump is using the presidency to enhance the global standing of authoritarianism .

He’s also imitating far-right tactics at home, by rejecting American traditions like balance of power and the rule of law. As David Cornstein, a longtime friend of Trump’s who is now the American ambassador to Hungary, told The Atlantic’s Franklin Foer in a recent piece about Orban’s Hungary: “I can tell you, knowing the president for a good 25 or 30 years, that he would love to have the situation that Viktor Orban has, but he doesn’t.”

Related: I visited Hungary last year and found it both normal and chilling.

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