Trump security secretary Noem endorses Polish conservative presidential candidate at CPAC Poland

Keep our news free from ads and paywalls by making a donation to support our work!

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.

Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, has endorsed right-wing Polish presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki during a speech today at CPAC Poland, the first time the US conservative conference has been held in the country.

Her show of support comes days before Sunday’s presidential election run-off in Poland, in which Nawrocki, who is supported by the conservative opposition, will face Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and candidate of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main ruling party.

“Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol if you make him the leader of this country,” said Noem.

“You can be that shining city on a hill that the rest of Europe and the world will watch and know how strong you are, how free you are, because you’ve elected the right leader who will protect it and defend it and ensure that every individual is treated the same and has equal rights as afforded to them,” she added.

“If you elect a leader who will work with President Trump, the Polish people will have a strong ally,” continued Noem. “You will continue to have a US military presence here…and you will have equipment that is American made, high quality.”

Meanwhile, she warned about the danger represented by “socialists and people that are just like this mayor out of Warsaw [Trzaskowski], an absolute train wreck of a leader”. Such people “have destroyed our countries, because they…have used fear to promote an agenda”, she added, likening Trzaskowski to Joe Biden.

Earlier this month, Nawrocki was invited to the White House for talks with US officials, including a meeting with Trump himself in the Oval Office. The US president has long enjoyed close relations with PiS and with Poland’s current PiS-aligned president, Andrzej Duda.

In March this year, the American Conservative Union (ACU), which organises CPAC, announced that they would hold an event in Poland for the first time. At today’s conference, which took place in the city of Rzeszów, speakers included Duda and former PiS Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

During his speech, Morawiecki attacked “globalists and the left,” and warned that EU bureaucracy has made the bloc inflexible and economically vulnerable. He also called for “Poland [to] free itself from the madness of distributing illegal immigrants”, a reference to the EU’s migration pact.

Morawiecki also stressed the importance of maintaining close ties with Washington. “We will not allow the US to be forced out of Europe…We Poles, we are for an alliance with the United States,” he said. PiS has regularly accused the current Polish government of harming relations with the US.

Various speakers also voiced support for Nawrocki in his presidential bid. “I firmly believe that there are at least two presidents in this room – the present one and the future one,” said Duda, who first announced his support for Nawrocki last month.

During his own speech, Nawrocki warned of a “great crisis” facing Europe, saying that the continent “needs a strong conservative voice, including from Poland”. He criticised the EU’s climate and migration policies, and pledged to reject the latter if elected as president.

Meanwhile, Romanian nationalist leader George Simion, who recently lost in his country’s presidential run-off against pro-EU centrist Nicușor Dan, also addressed the conference. He and Nawrocki have previously campaigned together.

“I am here to send a warning signal to the Polish people. Be careful, because just like in Romania, this Sunday they will try to steal the election from you,” he said. “I am here to tell you that the Polish people must be careful that what happened in Romania is not repeated.”

CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp, who opened the conference with a call for global conservative solidarity, framed the event as part of a broader ideological struggle.

“When one of us is under attack, the rest of us must come to that person’s defence,” he said. “The globalists intend to take each one of us out one by one – to shame us, to silence us, to bankrupt us, to ruin us, to make our kids turn against us.”

That is why “win[ning] all these elections, including in Poland, [is] so important to the freedom of people everywhere”, he added.

Polls suggest that Sunday’s presidential election run-off in Poland will be an extremely tight race between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki. The winner will succeed Duda when his second and final five-year term in office ends in August.

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: Karol Nawrocki/X

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.