‘Hungary is a critical member of the EU and NATO and Prime Minister Orban is an important leader. He thinks very highly of you,’ Joe Wilson wrote.

Representative Joe Wilson is asking President Trump to lean on Hungary’s leader to distance himself from anti-U.S. dictatorships, National Review has learned.

In a letter to Trump this week, the South Carolina Republican praised Orban’s record as a “freedom fighter” who stood up to Soviet communism in the 1990s and expressed his “personal” appreciation for him, but warned that the Hungarian leader has subsequently been led astray by his foreign policy advisers. In recent years, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has cultivated closer ties with Beijing and Tehran.

In particular, Wilson lamented that Hungary’s foreign minister traveled to Tehran to ink a new trade deal with Iran and that Iran’s hard-line former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at a public Hungarian university. “Our close allies, including Israel, objected vehemently, yet Hungary has gone forward with building deeper ties and even complained about sanctions on the Iranian regime,” Wilson wrote in the letter, which was obtained by NR.

He also pointed to Hungary’s expanding ties with the Chinese Communist Party, including the signing of an “All-Weather” friendship treaty last year. Orban’s government has also welcomed Chinese police to conduct foot patrols in Budapest, facilitated the opening of a Chinese electric vehicle factory in Hungary, and planned to host the first Chinese university campus abroad.

“As Prime Minister Orban is a freedom fighter and an anti-communist, I am certain that he can cancel these agreements and adopt a foreign policy that better reflects shared Hungarian and American interests. I respectfully request that you encourage him to expunge Iranian, Chinese, and Russian influence in Hungary, and to engage a policy of non-recognition with the Ivanishvili regime in Georgia, produced by rigged elections,” Wilson wrote.

“Hungary is a critical member of the EU and NATO and Prime Minister Orban is an important leader. He thinks very highly of you, and I am sure will listen to your thoughts.”