Donald Trump’s officials and allies have flocked to Poland this week as they try to turn the tide in favour of far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki ahead of Sunday’s presidential ballot.
Key MAGA influencers – including Trump’s own head of Homeland Security – attended CPAC Poland on 27 May, urging Poland to elect Nawrocki of the Law and Justice party and calling the vote a “battle for Western civilisation”.
Liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski and Nawrocki are neck-and-neck in the polls ahead of the vote. Nawrocki is expected to block the return of an independent judiciary in Poland, has blamed “the decisions of the European elites” for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and opposes the EU’s Green Deal, describing it as a threat to Poland’s economy and sovereignty.
DeSmog obtained exclusive audio of the event, and can reveal that speakers called for an international coalition to be built around Trump, spoke in apocalyptic terms about the future of the European Union, and even vowed to “liquidate” the European Commission.
“In this last election, when we needed you guys the most, you were there,” said businessman Terry R. Yormack, referring to the “millions of Polish Americans” who turned out to vote for Trump at last year’s U.S. presidential election, as well as pro-Trump coverage from the conservative Polish media outlet TV Republika.
“I’m from Chicago. There’s a million Polish Americans in Chicago and you guys came to us to help put our Donald in. I am here to return the favour,” he said.
Landing in Poland ahead of the conference, Trump’s head of Homeland Security Kristi Noem officially endorsed Nawrocki, and promised U.S. military assistance if he wins the vote.
“If you elect a leader who will work with President Trump, the Polish people will have a strong ally,” she said. “You will continue to have a U.S. military presence here… and you will have equipment that is American made, high quality.”
The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which has hosted events across the world in recent years, is convened by the American Conservative Union and provides a platform to the radical right-wing populism articulated by Trump.
A CPAC conference is also taking place in Hungary this week, featuring a number of MAGA figures including prominent conservative podcasters Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin, as well as Trump advisor Alex Brusewitz.
Speaking at CPAC Poland, failed Romanian presidential candidate George Simion said that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – a key European ally of Trump – was at risk of losing next year’s Hungarian election.
If Nawrocki does not win, “Hungary will be next, and Viktor Orbán will lose power,” Simion warned. “Then our entire continent, the whole European Union, will become a dictatorship.”
Simion, who stood in Romania’s presidential election this month, ran on an explicitly pro-Trump ticket, saying, “We fight for the same values… We share the same goals”.
His election loss was another recent setback for the international MAGA coalition, which also saw its preferred candidate Sali Berisha lose in May’s Albanian election.
Trump’s allies have been aggressively expanding their European footprint in recent months – openly trying to influence elections and shape the continent’s politics.
As revealed by DeSmog, the Heritage Foundation – the group that drafted the ‘Project 2025’ blueprint for Trump’s second term – helped to write Berisha’s election manifesto. The foundation also convened a private summit in March with key think tanks to discuss how to dismantle the current structures of the European Union.
This was also a theme at CPAC Poland, with speakers rallying against the supposed autocratic instincts of EU “elites” working in Brussels. One speaker called for the “liquidation” of the European Commission – the EU’s primary decision-making body – in 2027, and the “retirement” of its current chief Ursula von der Leyen, according to a translation of his remarks.
Pro-Trump, Anti-EU
A number of speakers emphasised the importance of Sunday’s vote in delivering a new pro-Trump leader in Europe who could oppose the “woke” edicts of the EU – including its flagship Green Deal climate agenda.
The speakers talked up the Polish election as a defining moment for “Western civilisation”, calling it a “battle” or a “war” between freedom and autocracy.
John Eastman of the Claremont Institute – a member of the Project 2025 advisory board – said that “Poland is poised to play a critical role in defeating this threat to Western civilization.”
He added: “That is why the election this coming Sunday is so important. For whether Poland chooses to embrace the European Union from whence this threat comes, or stop it in its tracks, much like it stopped the Ottoman threat three centuries ago… We in the United States are watching with keen interest… Western civilization is in the balance. Freedom is in balance.”
This was reiterated by James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute – one of the world’s foremost climate science denial groups. He claimed that “if the totalitarian socialists” controlling the EU have their way “we may not be able to wave this Polish flag any more”.
As revealed by DeSmog, the Heartland Institute has been working with far-right politicians in Europe – including in Poland – over the past two years in an attempt to scupper climate legislation.
A fervour for Trump and a zealous opposition to the European Union was also expressed by a number of CPAC Poland’s European speakers.
Mateusz Morawiecki, a former Polish prime minister for Law and Justice, claimed that “Europe and its entire economic model is today, if not in ruin, at least in a state of deep deficit, and needs rebuilding”, according to a translation.
Reflecting Trump’s rhetoric, CPAC Hungary chair Miklós Szántó said that “We still do have a job here in Europe to drain the swamp in Brussels”, which he said could only be achieved through victory in Sunday’s election – as well as next year’s ballot in Hungary.
Szántó also echoed one of the key themes of the conference – the need to build an international MAGA movement to defeat their “socialist” opponents. This was essential, he said, because otherwise they would relinquish power to a “federal European state” and “the very same globalists who tried to sentence Donald J. Trump, who tried not only to remove him from power but to stop him returning to the White House.”
The answer, he said, is for the radical right to “organise ourselves internationally”.
“We should have an international nationalist movement,” he said, “a global platform for anti-globalist forces.”
The speakers revealed a tension and an anxiety in the global MAGA movement – on the one hand realising the need to capitalise on the election of Trump, and on the other lamenting the recent losses of pro-Trump candidates in Europe.
As stated by Tomasz Froelich, a Member of European Parliament for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party: “Trump is in a sense a very important figure, along with this whole new American administration, because it supports our movements”.
As DeSmog has reported, pro-Trump forces have launched a concerted campaign to build international alliances and support far-right candidates globally.
Speaking in February at the annual Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London – attended by influential populist figures from across the world – Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said that his organisation would support “our friends from Europe” to “reclaim” their institutions, suggesting that supranational organisations like the EU, United Nations, and World Health Organisation “rob us of our individual sovereignty”.
“This is all about reclaiming sovereignty, reclaiming the spirit, the sovereignty of each of our nation states,” he said. “And so I can speak for a lot of Americans here and certainly all of us from the Heritage Foundation… We’ve drawn a line in the sand and we’re ready to lead the world again.”
Part of this mission involves shifting media and public discourse – a topic referenced at CPAC Poland.
Matthew Tyrmand, a former board member at Project Veritas, a prominent right-wing activist group, said that the goal of conservative media in Poland and the U.S. is “to shift the Overton Window and get people from the centre to the right or from the centre-left to the centre.”
According to Maureen Bannon – daughter of Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon – this can be achieved in both Poland and the U.S. through the influence of far-right media channels. She spoke of using “TV Republika or War Room [Steve Bannon’s podcast] or Breitbart, Newsmax, OAN, different stations, getting that information out into the general public”.
And Jack Posobiec, the pro-Trump media personality and activist, said that the interests and concerns of sympathetic Polish politicians could now be raised directly with Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“You are under attack in Poland,” he claimed. “We can raise that awareness in the United States. And because we have a president like Donald J. Trump and a State Department under Marco Rubio, we have the ability to put pressure now in all of these cases.”
Gunning Down the Green Deal
A prominent theme running throughout CPAC Poland was an opposition to the EU’s Green Deal – the bloc’s policy programme designed to reduce emissions and protect the environment.
Former Polish prime minister Morawiecki claimed that green policies were “destroying European industry” and that the continent needed to be “liberated” from the “mad leftist liberal revolution” that includes the Green Deal.
The conference also played host to the denial of basic climate facts. James Taylor of the Heartland Institute claimed that “human civilisation began 6,000 years ago” and “for most of that time period, temperatures have been warmer than today.”
Taylor praised Trump’s anti-climate policies, including his decision to boost coal, natural gas, and nuclear. “This is the way to revive the American economy, and it will be the way to revive Polish economy,” he claimed.
In reality, climate scientists have found that the planet is hotter now than it has been for at least 12,000 years.
Although Trump has been putting pressure on the rest of the world to follow his lead to “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels, the EU has resisted the new president’s anti-climate overtures.
Speaking in January following Trump’s inauguration, von der Leyen said: “Climate change is still on top of the global agenda.”
