Former President Trump touted his foreign policy credentials during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, citing the strong relationships he built during his tenure with leaders of rival countries and allies, particularly Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Europe’s “strongman.”

“He’s a tough guy, a smart prime minister of Hungary,” Trump said, adding that Orban insisted “you need Trump back as president” because “they were afraid of him.”

“China was afraid, and I hate to use the word afraid, but I’ll just quote him,” Trump said. “China was afraid of him. He said Russia was afraid of him.”

“Look, Viktor Orban said it: He said the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president,” Trump added.

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Trump also responded to Vice President Harris’s claim that he “admires dictators, wants to be a dictator from day one” and that he “exchanged love letters with Kim Jong Un” by noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had endorsed her last week and said he hoped she would win “because what he’s accomplished is absolutely incredible.”

Then-President Trump shakes hands with Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, at the White House on May 13, 2019. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Trump said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would never have happened during his time in office, and said he knew Putin “very well.”

Trump then criticized Biden for the way he damaged the XL pipeline and gave Russia a victory with “the largest pipeline in the world” running to Germany and all of Europe.

Then-President Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during their second summit meeting on February 28, 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Vietnam News Agency/Handout/Getty Images)

Trump has repeatedly compared his foreign policy to that of the Biden administration, including Harris as part of that policy. He has also pointed to the more interventionist approach he has taken, using force as a deterrent against Iran and meeting with Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to ensure stability in regions facing uncertainty.

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Trump and Orban had a rosy relationship during the Trump administration, often pictured together, laughing and shaking hands, a stark contrast to the more subdued encounters between Orban and Biden.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seen during a NATO summit in Washington, DC, on July 11, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Orban made headlines last summer when he prematurely canceled a high-level NATO summit in Washington, DC, to meet Trump in Florida, as Biden faced questions about his fitness for office and his bid for a second term. Orban sought a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine conflict after meeting separately with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“We continued the peace mission in Mar-a-Lago,” Orban wrote on his official social media account on X after the meeting. “President @realDonaldTrump proved during his presidency that he is a man of peace. He will do it again!”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seen here with former President Trump during his visit to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on July 11, 2024. (@PM_ViktorOrban)

“It was an honor to visit President @realDonaldTrump at Mar-a-Lago today,” he wrote in a separate post that dubbed the visit “Peace Mission 5.0.” “We talked about ways to make peace. The good news of the day: He’s going to fix it!”

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Orban, who took on the role of president of the European Union as part of a six-month rotation program, joked at the time that Hungary would “make Europe great again” and warned that “the next American president will not be the same president as today’s president.”

He told other leaders at the formal NATO dinner that allies who still thought Biden could win the upcoming presidential election were “like people on the Titanic playing the violin as the ship sank,” the Financial Times reported.

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During a visit to the US in March, Orban spoke to Trump, not Biden, in an attempt to influence potential US foreign policy, and spoke on a panel with the leader of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.