Move over Vladimir Putin and Steven Seagal, there’s a new strongman bromance brewing.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán released a video Tuesday that showed him promoting his counter-terrorism unit to none other than Chuck Norris.
The martial arts aficionado and actor met Orbán on a recent visit to Budapest, when he greeted the prime minister with a hug.
“I have read so much about you, I feel like we have already met,” Chuck Norris, who was accompanied by his wife, Gena O’Kelley, said in the video.
Orbán later told the American that “90% of the comments on me is negative … the liberals hate me.”
“You’re like [US President Donald] Trump,” Norris replied.
“A little bit more than that!” Orbán said.
Norris, who is a devout Christian and social conservative, wrote on his Facebook page that he was in the country at the invitation of Hungarian Baptist Aid.
The 78-year-old has gained a following in the Eastern European country over the years. He was the frontrunner in an online poll to name a new bridge spanning the Danube, the Guardian reported in 2006.
Orbán, like the action star, espouses Christian values and is a fan of the US president. Since his populist right-wing Fidesz Party swept into power in 2010, and most recently won another landslide victory in April this year, Orbán has come under increasing fire over crackdowns on democratic institutions.
These include the government’s “Stop Soros” law, named after Hungarian-American billionaire philanthropist George Soros and introduced in June, which banned nongovernmental organizations from assisting migrants.
“I am a street fighter basically, I’m not coming from the elite,” Orbán, who went to Oxford University on a Soros-funded scholarship, told Norris in the video.
In the video, the prime minister personally drives Norris to meet the country’s counter-terrorism unit, which Orbán described as “the highest level and quality of defending the people.”
The scene cuts to Norris and Orbán watching the men in army fatigues wrestle, swing kettle-bells and perform a raid. The display prompts Norris to remark: “I have seen training all over the world, and this is the best demonstration – the best I’ve seen.”
“Friends forever,” remarks O’Kelley as she watches her husband thank Orbán for the excursion.
In August, Russia appointed actor Seagal as a “special representative” on US-Russian humanitarian ties. Seagal, who became a Russian citizen in 2016, is a close friend of the Russian President and attended his swearing-in ceremony in May.