Poland’s nationalists stick to Trump like glue ahead of presidential election

WARSAW — They donned the MAGA hats. They chanted “Donald Trump!” in the Polish parliament. 

And the enthusiasm of Poland’s nationalist opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party for the United States president isn’t dimming despite his attacks on Ukraine, his cozying up to Russia and his administration’s denunciations of European democracy.

There’s a lot of political mileage in Poland for sticking with Trump — something PiS hopes to capitalize on in May’s presidential election.

The American president has a lot of Polish fans.

An opinion poll conducted just before the U.S. presidential election found that around half of those surveyed backed Democrat Kamala Harris, but support for Trump was much higher among PiS voters and the even more far-right Confederation party.

Trump presents a conundrum for many European populists. They love his war on woke and his administration’s overt backing for far-right parties. In his first post-election trip to Europe, Vice President JD Vance extolled Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party while denouncing the continent’s liberal democracies.

But Trump’s attacks on NATO and on Ukraine create dilemmas for PiS, which has tended to be vociferously anti-Russian.

However, that’s not stopping PiS leaders from circling Trump.

Over the weekend, Polish President Andrzej Duda attended CPAC, the U.S. gathering of conservatives, where he sat in the front row for Trump’s speech and had a brief chat with the U.S. president, who “reaffirmed our close alliance,” the White House said after the meeting.

Earlier this week Duda doubled down, insisting that the U.S. is a “reliable ally” and calling for any American troops being relocated from Germany to be moved to Poland.

The party’s presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki, is also all-in for Trump.

Last week he backed Trump’s attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying he was “disappointed” with the leader Trump had denounced as a “dictator.”

“Today, on the international stage, [Zelenskyy] is paying the price for how he treats his key allies,” Nawrocki said.

He also praised Trump for trying to end the war in Ukraine — although the president has been criticized for taking a strongly pro-Russian line in the talks.

“President Donald Trump’s words in the negotiation process show that this will be a tough negotiation by the U.S. side,” Nawrocki said.

Knocking Ukraine

Nawrocki, a historian who is not formally a member of PiS, is tailoring his appeal to right-wing voters, many of whom harbor a dislike for Ukraine. The massacre of civilian Poles by Ukrainian guerrillas during World War II remains a sore point, and there is growing disenchantment in Poland with Ukrainian refugees and continuing aid for Ukraine.

He has also ruled out allowing Ukraine to join NATO or the EU “until important … issues for Poles are resolved.”

“There’s been a visible increase in anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Polish society. Perhaps Nawrocki’s staff have concluded that the key to electoral success is the radical language used by the MAGA movement, also on Ukrainian topics,” said Bartosz Rydliński, a political scientist with Warsaw’s Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University.

A recent survey found 53 percent of Poles want to halt weapons shipments to Kyiv; there are fewer Ukraine backers among right-wing voters than among those who support centrist parties.

Those voters also have a lot of affection for Trump and his views.

During his first term in office, Trump had very close relations with the PiS-led government that was then in charge in Poland — sharing views on their opposition to abortion, liberal democracy and immigration.

Close race

Nawrocki is trying to catch the centrist mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, who is the candidate of the Civic Platform party led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

In a recent opinion poll, Trzaskowski had the support of 34.1 percent of those surveyed, while Nawrocki was second with 25.7 percent. However, Nawrocki is more concerned with his right flank, where Sławomir Mentzen, the Confederation candidate, is rising fast. The poll had him at 16.2 percent, up from 9.8 percent two weeks earlier.

If no candidate wins an outright majority in the first round, a second vote is held between the top two candidates two weeks later. Polls show Trzaskowski with a narrow lead in a second round.

The election is crucial for both PiS and Civic Platform. Tusk’s party wants to take over the presidency from PiS-aligned Duda, who has been blocking part of their program, while PiS wants to bounce back from its 2023 defeat in the parliamentary election.

The attacks on Zelenskyy differentiate Nawrocki from Trzaskowski and Tusk, who are enthusiastic backers of the Ukrainian president. Confederation supporters are the most leery of Ukraine.

But sticking like glue to Trump does pose dangers for PiS, especially as the U.S. president gets ever closer to detested Russian leader Vladimir Putin and begins to undermine NATO, an alliance with huge popular support in Poland.

“PiS created this Trumpian narrative and are trying to figure out what to do with it now,” said Paweł Maranowski, a sociologist at Collegium Civitas, a university in Warsaw.

“They had better not stick to it too closely or they and their presidential candidate will lose in the polls. Whether they are going to dodge the difficult questions about Trump or do a U-turn on the narrative remains to be seen in the coming weeks,” Maranowski said. 

Too much Trump?

There is also some disquiet in PiS ranks.

“Zelenskyy isn’t a dictator. He won democratic elections and he cannot call a new election now that Ukraine is at war. There only are two dictators in Europe: Vladimir Putin and [Belarusian President] Alexander Lukashenko,” Marcin Przydacz, a member of parliament for PiS and a former foreign policy aide to Duda, told POLITICO.

“While it is in our best interest to maintain the best possible relations with anyone who is in the White House currently, there are certain questions that need to be raised — one of them being the policy toward Ukraine and Russia,” the MP added. 

But Przydacz was enthusiastic about Trump’s social and domestic policies.

“There are issues where our policies align with the approach of the Republicans. One example is the criticism of the radical left, which seeks to restrict freedom of speech,” Przydacz said, adding: “We know that Trump is cutting funding for extreme left-wing organizations, which is another positive development.”

Trzaskowski is also trying to figure out Trump. Last week he advised “remaining cool about the signals coming to us” from America.

“Our alliance with the U.S. is key. Let me underline: with the U.S., not with one or another administration,” Trzaskowski said.

Meanwhile, Nawrocki has accused Tusk and other European leaders of leading an “anti-American rebellion” by distancing the continent from the U.S.

Trump may soon become an even bigger factor in Polish politics. When he met with the U.S. president, Duda invited him to Warsaw for April 28 — just three weeks before the first round of the presidential election.