Trump’s victory presents dangers for both Poland’s government and opposition [Opinion]

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

By Daniel Tilles

OPINION

Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House will present potential headaches for Poland’s government, whose prime minister, Donald Tusk, has been vocally critical of his fellow Donald in the past.

However, although the US election result was celebrated by the conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, which enjoyed a close relationship with the Trump administration when both were previously in office, there are also major risks for them in so clearly hitching themselves to the Trump bandwagon.

As Trump’s victory became clear on Wednesday morning, PiS politicians chanted his name in parliament. One was pictured wearing a MAGA cap in the chamber.

On Sunday, ahead of the election, the head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus, Mariusz Błaszczak, had even declared that Tusk should resign if Trump won, given his previous criticism of the Republican candidate.

The Polish government has sought to downplay such claims this week, but with little success. At a press conference on Thursday, Tusk denied a suggestion from a conservative journalist that he had once suggested Trump has ties with Moscow.

However, PiS figures quickly began sharing a video from a speech last year in which Tusk – then an opposition leader – did indeed say that Trump’s “dependence on the Russian security services is no longer in doubt”.

Fact-checking website Demagog pointed out that Tusk also last year shared a photo on Instagram of himself with Joe Biden along with a caption saying: “Imagine that a politician dependent on Moscow…could once again become president. To this day, I don’t understand why the entire PiS party was so in love with Trump.”

This year, after becoming prime minister, Tusk said that Trump is still “very clearly showing his…pro-Russian attitude that we know from the past” and that his return to the White House would “probably be detrimental from the point of view of Poland’s security”.

Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has also faced questions, not so much about his own previous comments on Trump but about those of his wife, American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum.

She has been a vocal critic of Trump, including writing an article for The Atlantic last month that accused the Republic candidate of “speaking like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini”.

In an interview with state broadcaster TVP on Thursday, Sikorski was asked if he agreed with the opinion – reportedly being privately expressed by some in his and Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO) party – that Applebaum’s views make it impossible for him to stand as a candidate in Poland’s presidential elections next year.

Sikorski responded by telling the interviewer that a wife is not “an extension of her husband”. He is, of course, absolutely right to make that distinction. Yet equally, with a politician of Trump’s character, it is also fair to question whether Applebaum’s views could affect Poland’s relations with the new US administration.

Were Sikorski to stand in the presidential elections – and he is believed to be one of the two main candidates PO have been considering – it is certainly hard to imagine Applebaum, as first lady, welcoming Donald and Melania Trump to the Polish presidential palace.

More broadly, the issues addressed by Tusk and Sikorski point to the difficulties Poland will now face in relations with a US president who often appears to place personal feelings towards world leaders above other considerations.

On the other hand, Trump has also shown that he is not one to hold a grudge when it serves his interests: he has just been elected on a ticket with JD Vance, a man who has previously called Trump an “idiot”, an “asshole”, and “America’s Hitler”.

Meanwhile, although PiS is currently revelling in Trump’s victory, it needs to be careful with its own rhetoric, which runs the risk of making the party appear to be working against the Polish national interest and to be suggesting that Poland is some kind of US vassal state.

On Thursday, for example, PiS politician Dominik Tarczyński, who has close ties to Trump and has been pictured at his campaign events, said that he “can reveal that Donald Trump has received all materials with negative statements about him” by Polish government figures.

“Donald Trump is aware of what Radosław Sikorski’s wife wrote about him, what Polish politicians, including Donald Tusk, said about him,” added Tarczyński.

That prompted criticism from figures in the ruling camp that PiS was “informing on” the Polish government to the country’s main ally and seeking to provoke foreign intervention in domestic Polish politics.

Many also noted the hypocrisy that, when it was in power, PiS regularly criticised the opposition for doing exactly the same kind of thing by reporting alleged wrongdoing by the PiS government to the EU authorities and urging Brussels to intervene.

Błaszczak’s suggestion that the Polish government should resign if Trump won the election likewise drew criticism.

“Błaszczak made the most unsovereign statement, suggesting that events in other countries decide who governs in Poland,” said Tusk on Tuesday. “Who governs in Poland is decided by Polish voters.”

It appears that even many in PiS are wary of the impression that such rhetoric gives off. Asked about Błaszczak’s statement, the party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, called it a “radical” view and refused to endorse the idea that Tusk should resign due to Trump’s victory.

Senior PiS figures, speaking anonymously to news website Onet, also suggested that Błaszczak’s comments had gone too far.

One of them also said he “hopes we don’t regret” such enthusiastic support for Trump. He noted that the returning US president is “unpredictable” and that Poland, “as a frontline country, always has to keep these worst-case scenarios in mind”.

Those remarks refer to perhaps the greatest risk for PiS in so clearly throwing its lot in with Trump. The party holds a strongly anti-Russian position and, when in power, turned Poland into one of Ukraine’s closest allies following Putin’s full-scale invasion.

That position also reflects the views of Polish society as a whole. The Pew Research Centre has found Poles to hold the most anti-Russian views among all countries it surveys. Ukraine also enjoys widespread support in Poland.

Trump, by contrast, responded to the invasion of Ukraine by calling it a “genius” and “savvy” move by Russia, and has referred to Putin as a “friend”. He has promised that, as president, he would bring the war in Ukraine to a swift conclusion, whereas Poland has staunchly backed Kyiv’s right to end the conflict on its own terms.

If, as many believe, Trump pursues a conciliatory line towards Russia and a less friendly one towards Ukraine, that will put PiS in an awkward position with its domestic electorate.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Grzegorz Jakubowski/KPRP