With parliamentary elections approaching in 2027, PiS must explain why its special relationship with an unpopular American president remains an asset Donald Trump has been thrashed at the polls, but Poland's presidential palace would like everyone to stop exaggerating. Hours after American voters handed the Democrats control of both houses of Congress, Zbigniew Bogucki, head of President Karol Nawrocki’s chancellery, was offering viewers of the pro-Law and Justice (PiS) TV Republika a rather more reassuring interpretation of the result. “The Republicans did not win these midterm elections, but they did not suffer a crushing defeat,” he insisted. In Paris, meanwhile, Jordan Bardella, leader of the nationalist National Rally, was offering a rather different assessment, acknowledging that the American intervention in Iran had carried very heavy consequences. “There is most certainly a link,” he said of the war and the result. The contrast is revealing because Europe's nationalist right has spent much of the past year coming to terms with the growing political liabilities of its association with Trump. In France, Germany and Italy, populist leaders increasingly found reasons to criticize him when his policies conflicted with their national interests. Poland's PiS and Nawrocki, meanwhile, continued to treat their relationship with Trump as an important political asset, even as his popularity declined. Tuesday's result leaves them having to defend a relationship whose electoral value is looking increasingly questionable. Europe’s populists read the room The warning signs came in January, when Trump’s threats to seize Greenland, backed by punitive tariffs on European countries, drew remarkably sharp criticism from people who had previously admired him. Bardella denounced “commercial blackmail” and called on the EU to suspend its tariff deal with Washington. In Germany, Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), criticizing US conduct over Venezuela and Greenland, accused Trump of having “violated a fundamental campaign promise,” while her fellow leader Tino Chrupalla complained of “Wild West methods.” Even Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister and one of his closest European allies, called the threatened tariffs “a mistake.” The Iran war deepened the estrangement, since higher energy prices made it hard for parties promising to protect living standards and keep their countries out of foreign conflicts to defend Trump’s adventures. There was, of course, a straightforward calculation behind all this, because nationalists who build their appeal on sovereignty cannot easily cheer an American president who threatens the sovereignty and prosperity of their own countries. The warning from Budapest April then brought an even more uncomfortable lesson, when Viktor Orbán, Europe’s most prominent MAGA-aligned leader, was swept from power after 16 years by Péter Magyar’s center-right Tisza party. Trump had endorsed him and Vice President JD Vance had gone to Budapest to campaign, yet neither made any difference. Orbán lost mainly because of economic stagnation and fatigue with his government, but the result showed that a Trump endorsement guarantees nothing, and by then the National Rally and AfD were treating the MAGA connection as something to be managed rather than flaunted. Warsaw took a different view, and the reasons say a good deal about the predicament now facing Poland’s right. Poland’s special relationship For PiS, Trump’s victory in November 2024 was cause for unrestrained celebration, with its MPs chanting his name in the Sejm, the lower house of Poland’s parliament, and some wearing MAGA caps. Indeed, PiS parliamentary leader and former defense minister Mariusz Błaszczak went so far as to suggest that Tusk should resign if Trump won, arguing that the Polish prime minister had backed the wrong candidate and would find himself in an impossible position with Washington. It was a remarkable proposition, effectively making the future of Poland's government dependent on the outcome of an American election, although it gives us some idea of just how much PiS believed it stood to gain from Trump's return. The mood persisted through Nawrocki’s election as president in 2025, a win Trump had backed and later cited with evident pride. For PiS, Trump's victory was also a vindication of its own political worldview. Here was a conservative nationalist who had defeated the liberal establishment, returned to power against considerable odds and promised to challenge the international political order that PiS had spent years railing against. His victory appeared to offer encouragement to conservatives who hoped to achieve something similar in Europe. There are, I should say, perfectly sound strategic reasons for this. Poland’s security rests heavily on American military power, Russia is waging war next door, and Nawrocki’s access to the White House offers a useful channel to an administration that has found Donald Tusk’s government harder going. The difference showed during the Greenland crisis, when other nationalist leaders condemned Trump while Nawrocki, speaking at Davos, urged Europeans to avoid antagonizing Washington, saying some Western European partners should drop their gestures of hostility toward the United States. “We must take into account what Donald Trump says about world security, because he is responsible for it as a leader and we must support him,” the Polish president declared. Yet there is a difference between maintaining good relations with an American president and publicly defending everything he does, and Polish voters, as it happens, have been considerably less impressed than their president. The voters are less enthusiastic A February study by the European Council on Foreign Relations found that Poland has one of Europe’s largest concentrations of committed Trump supporters. The researchers’ “Trumpists,” voters who regard the US as an ally but think poorly of the EU, made up 11% of Poles against 5% across their 13-country sample. They were prominent among PiS supporters but accounted for only around a tenth of the electorates of National Rally and AfD, which helps explain why PiS has been so reluctant to follow its European cousins. An IBRiS poll for Rzeczpospolita in mid-October showed the limits of that enthusiasm, though, with 66.5% of Poles saying Trump’s policies do not serve Poland’s interests and only 19.4% calling them beneficial. The split on the right was especially telling. Among first-round Nawrocki voters in last year’s presidential election, 45.8% viewed Trump’s policies favorably, and among Grzegorz Braun’s supporters, the figure was 53.1%, but among those who backed Confederation’s Sławomir Mentzen, fully 85.1% said they did not serve Poland. That is awkward for PiS, since it will need to reach beyond its traditional base ahead of the 2027 parliamentary election, and enthusiasm for Trump is plainly not the unifying force on the right that some of its politicians imagine. The price of friendship Nor has the much-vaunted friendship delivered everything promised. In May, Trump announced an additional 5,000 US troops for Poland, linking the decision explicitly to Nawrocki’s election, and the president duly thanked him, but the troops had still not arrived nearly six months later. Talks on a permanent American base continue, which would give Nawrocki a real achievement to show voters, yet Tuesday’s result adds uncertainty as Trump faces two years of bitter battles at home. Mariusz Błaszczak was worrying aloud on Wednesday about precisely that. “The United States will turn its attention to itself. There will be conflicts,” he told RMF24, fearing the base might never materialize. He blamed Tusk’s government for failing to seize a unique opportunity, but his remarks were revealing all the same, because while Bogucki was playing down the defeat, Błaszczak was conceding that it could cost Poland dearly. That is the heart of the difficulty, since a party that has invested so much political capital in Trump must now show that the relationship delivers, just as his own fortunes deteriorate. A problem for the next election Trump, of course, remains president for another two years, and nobody should imagine that Tuesday signals the collapse of Europe’s nationalist movements, whose fortunes depend far more on domestic conditions than on American popularity. PiS and Nawrocki therefore have every reason to keep the White House onside, given Poland’s dependence on America for its security. But there is a political difference between working with a president because your country’s interests demand it and making identification with his movement part of your own electoral pitch. Nawrocki’s foreign-policy chief, Marcin Przydacz, struck a more pragmatic note, acknowledging that the economic situation and “mistakes by Donald Trump’s team” had made a Democratic victory predictable. He insisted that Poland must maintain good relations with Washington regardless of whom Americans elect, although he could not resist turning the result into a warning for Tusk that “no government lasts forever.” With the Polish election less than a year away, then, PiS faces a delicate calculation. Trump may still be a useful friend to have in the White House, but the difficulty for Poland’s right is persuading its voters that the friendship is worth quite as much as it once claimed.
