While the U.S. government has repeatedly spoken in appreciative terms about U.S.-Poland relations under the current, liberal Polish administration, no high-ranking Polish official has yet been invited to the White House since Donald Trump took office in January.
In January this year, during a visit to Warsaw, Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, lauded Poland as a “model ally.” Last week, energy secretary Chris Wright also spoke positively about Polish-U.S. relations during a visit to Poland.
And yet, on May 1st, it was Karol Nawrocki, the independent presidential candidate supported by Poland’s national conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, who met with U.S. president Donald Trump at the White House.
The invitation extended to Nawrocki was not revealed until the day the meeting occurred. Nawrocki’s team announced that he would be attending an event marking the National Day of Prayer, at which Trump spoke to the attendees in the Rose Garden of the White House.
During that event, Nawrocki spoke with senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and after the event, he was received by Trump in the Oval Office.
Speaking later to Polish broadcaster Republika, Nawrocki said that Trump had told him “you will win” the Polish presidential election, the first round of which is scheduled for May 18th.
The invitation is a clear signal from the Washington administration of whom they regard as a strategic partner in Poland. Many PiS figures contrasted Nawrocki’s warm welcome at the White House with the fact that politicians associated with Poland’s current government have not been invited there.
As could be expected, politicians of the ruling, Tusk-led coalition criticised the U.S. administration for interfering in Poland’s election campaign.
“Instead of celebrating the anniversary of Poland’s accession to the EU and Labour Day [on 1 May] with his compatriots, [Nawrocki] preferred to fly [to the U.S.] to rat on his own country and ask to be anointed by the most pro-Russian U.S. president,” MP Tomasz Trela wrote.
“Trump will not choose our president, just as he did not choose the prime minister of Canada,” added Trela, referring to last week’s Canadian elections in which the Liberal Party won on the back of promises to stand up to Trump.
Until last month, Nawrocki had been trailing frontrunner Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main ruling party, in the polls. But in April, Nawrocki managed to significantly close the gap between himself and Trzaskowski, and is now only around four to six percentage points behind him.
If none of the 13 presidential candidates wins over 50% of the vote on May 18th, the top two will head into a second-round run-off on June 1.
PiS has enjoyed close relations with Trump since both were in office between 2017 and 2021. Days before the 2020 Polish presidential election, Trump also invited the PiS-backed candidate, incumbent president Andrzej Duda, to the White House.
