Trump's victory is a blow to Poland’s liberal leaders

For years, former opposition politicians and who are now in government, not only criticised but were overtly offensive towards America’s president-elect Donald Trump. Prime Minister Tusk, Foreign Minister Sikorski and many other ‘liberal’ politicians appear to hate Trump as much as they hate their political opponents in Poland, namely the conservative and patriotic PiS party (the Law and Justice Party). They rooted strongly for Kamala Harris throughout her campaign but now have to reckon with her defeat, which will weigh on relations between Poland and the US.

Just a few months ago, Tusk accused Trump of being pro-Russian and explained that his eventual victory would be bad news for Poland. During election rallies such as that held in Byton in 2023 he said that, according to the American secret services, Trump had been a Russian agent for a long time, probably for thirty years, and his dependence on Russian intelligence cannot be doubted (today Tusk, (lying) denies having made the comment). Moreover, to criticise the ruling PiS he compared the values and ideas professed by the party to the ideas and values Donald Trump holds, whom he described as a ‘comic and grotesque’ character. ‘What PiS proclaims about minorities, human rights, freedom of speech, etc. traces what Trump says’ - he said verbatim.

It should be remembered that it was precisely during the first Trump presidency that cooperation between Poland and the US in the field of nuclear energy was initiated (but sabotaged by the Tusk government); long-term agreements on liquid gas supply were signed to make Poland independent of supplies from Russia. And Trump himself decided that five thousand American soldiers would be permanently stationed in Poland. Initiatives that actually strengthened Poland's security.

A still more serious attack came from the current Foreign Minister Jaroslaw Sikorski and his wife Anne Applebaum, an American journalist who writes for The Atlantic (a newspaper co-owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’ widow) and is well known in liberal circles worldwide: Sikorski called Trump a proto-fascist, whereas Applebaum compared him to Hitler and Stalin.

Instead, Senator Bogdan Klich, former Minister of Defence, whom Minister Sikorski sent to Washington to represent the country as Director of the Embassy of Poland, wrote this about Trump. ‘According to PiS (the conservative party in government in the years 2015 - 2023), friendship with this unstable and non-democratic politician should have been the guarantee of Poland's security’ - one reads in his X profile in June 2022. Klich's case is linked to the serious problem concerning Poland's ambassadors. Foreign Minister Sikorski sent a large number of ambassadors back to Warsaw and sent his own men in their place, knowing that he could not appoint them ambassadors without consulting the appointments with President Duda (the Polish Constitution speaks of cooperation between the government and the president in foreign policy matters and of the President of the Republic appointing ambassadors, signing Letters of Credence and Revocation). But Sikorski prefers to keep a reduced diplomatic representation in many countries, weakening the country's position, rather than discuss appointments with Duda hated by the current rulers. Notably, key countries for international relations list the USA, Italy, Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Ukraine, Hungary and NATO. At the same time, he did not even proceed with the appointments for some thirty previously vacant seats, including Israel.

The sum of these hostile statements against the future US president threaten existing good Polish-American relations: there is no doubt that the anti-Trump rhetoric of the liberal Polish politicians, now in government, will undermine US relations with the Poland of Prime Minister Tusk, so well liked in Brussels and Berlin.

That the new US administration will change its attitude towards Tusk's ‘pro-European’ government can be seen in James Vance's comments about the situation in Poland. The future vice president criticised the current Polish government, rightly accusing it of destroying democracy in Poland. ‘What we see in Poland is a real attack on democracy’, he said. Vance also denounced the fact that President Biden's administration had used the US embassy in Poland to attack the PiS government. In fact, the US ambassador in Warsaw Mark Brzezinski openly criticised the conservative Polish government and had supported the then opposition. 

It must be hoped that as a result of this critical attitude towards the new US administration, other countries will also open their eyes to the democratic emergency in Poland led by Tusk.