Pete Marocco has spent much of this month hunkered in an office suite on the seventh floor of the State Department overseeing the dismantling of the architecture for how the United States delivers foreign aid.
But he did have time to greet a foreign guest who had been making the rounds in Washington during the Trump administration’s early days: an official in the government of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s autocratic leader.
During the meeting, according to statements released by the Hungarian official, Tristan Azbej, Mr. Marocco pledged to halt all aid programs that “intervened” in Hungary’s internal affairs.
The next day, Mr. Orban took to state radio to announce that media outlets, pro-democracy groups and other organizations that have received money from the U.S. Agency for International Development would be considered “illegal agents.” He praised the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the aid agency as a “cleansing wind.”
It was a little noticed moment of symbiosis between the governments of President Trump and Mr. Orban, which has spent years trying to suffocate political opposition and independent news media in Hungary. The country remains a NATO member, even as Mr. Orban has assiduously cultivated closer ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
But it is also a glimpse of how Mr. Marocco — the State Department official who took over the remains of U.S.A.I.D. and is now charged with reorienting a foreign aid mission to serve Mr. Trump’s agenda — sees his job.