(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Donald Trump compared Hungary’s illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban to having a twin brother, 444.hu news website reported, citing Trump’s envoy to Budapest.

The two leaders got along so well that Trump told Orban at the end of their White House meeting on Monday that “it’s like we’re twins,” U.S. Ambassador David Cornstein, who was present, told 444.hu in an interview published Wednesday.

The meeting capped a turnaround in U.S. policy that had focused for almost a decade on isolating the four-term Hungarian leader. Trump praised Orban as a “tough” and “respected” leader at the meeting, criticized by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators for sidestepping Orban’s erosion of democracy and deepening ties with Russia and China.

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.