By JILL COLVIN and MONIKA SCISLOWSKA (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump met Wednesday in New York with Polish President Andrzej Duda, continuing a series of meetings with foreign leaders as Europe prepares for the chance of Trump serving a second term.
The expected Republican nominee welcomed Duda at Trump Tower, where they talked about the war in Ukraine and Duda’s efforts to increase NATO members’ defense spending, according to a statement from Trump’s campaign. Duda, who has always expressed admiration for Trump, also strongly supports Ukraine and has urged the U.S. to provide more assistance to Kyiv during Russia’s ongoing invasion. However, this funding has been delayed by Trump allies in Congress.
Trump complimented the Polish president, saying, “He’s done a fantastic job and he’s my friend.”
“We had four great years together,” Trump added. “We’re behind Poland all the way.”
Following the nearly 2 1/2 hour meeting, Duda only said it was a “friendly meeting in a very nice atmosphere.”
His aide, Wojciech Kolarski, who was also present, described it as an “excellent meeting” between “two friends who remembered the time when they worked together for four years while holding presidential offices,” a time that was “very productive for Polish-U.S. relations.”
Duda is the most recent foreign leader to meet with Trump since he secured the Republican nomination. U.S. allies worldwide were surprised by Trump’s unexpected win in 2016, which led them to quickly establish relationships with a president who often criticized longstanding treaties and alliances they valued. Arranging meetings with him during the 2024 campaign indicates that they do not want to be caught off guard again.
Despite facing one of the four criminal indictments against him, Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden are engaged in a rematch that most observers anticipate will be very close in November.
While There were concerns in Poland about the visit potentially harming the country’s relationship with Biden, but Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. — a Biden supporter and influential figure in his party on foreign affairs — said such meetings are reasonable. “The polls are close,” he said. “If I were a foreign leader — and there’s a precedent for meeting with candidates who are nominated or on the path to being nominated — I’d probably do it too.”
Murphy pointed out that former President Barack Obama undertook an extensive international tour and met with foreign leaders when he first campaigned for the White House. The same went for Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, who challenged Obama in 2012 and traveled to Poland’s capital, Warsaw.
Duda’s visit comes a week after
Trump met with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, another NATO member and strong supporter of aiding Ukraine, at the former president’s Florida estate. In March, Trump hosted Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán , an autocrat who has the closest ties to Russia among European Union countries. Orbán shared a collection of footage from the visit on his Instagram feed, including an image of him and his staff meeting with Trump and the former president’s aides in an official-looking bilateral meeting.Trump also briefly met with Javier Milei, the passionate, right-wing populist president of Argentina who
ran a campaign inspired by Trump , including red “Make Argentina Great Again” hats. Milei enthusiastically huggedTrump backstage at the yearly Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, as shown in a video posted by a Trump campaign aide. Biden administration officials have been cautious about publicly expressing opinions on foreign leaders’ meetings with Trump, acknowledging his real chance of winning the race.
While some officials have privately shown frustration with such meetings, they are aware that any criticism would open the U.S. to charges of hypocrisy because senior American officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, frequently meet with foreign opposition figures at various events in the United States and abroad.
Security and policy officials monitor the travel plans of foreign officials visiting the U.S., but generally do not have a say in where they go or with whom they meet, according to an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the protocol.
Trump has been back in his hometown this week for the beginning of his
criminal hush money trial , which has significantly limited his ability to travel and campaign. While in town, aides have been planning a series of events that began Tuesday evening when Trump, after court adjourned,visited a Harlem bodega where a man was killed to rail against crime, and to criticize the district attorney who made him the first former president in U.S. history to stand criminal trial. Duda, a right-wing populist who once suggested naming a military base in his country “Fort Trump,” described the dinner earlier Wednesday as a private get-together between friends at Trump’s former residence while he is in town for meetings at the United Nations, where Duda is to deliver a speech.
“I have been invited by Mr. Donald Trump to his private apartment,” Duda told reporters, stating that it was “a normal practice when one country has good relations with another country” to want those relations to be as strong as “possible with the representatives of various sides of the political stage.”
“We know each other as people. Like two, I can say in some way, friends,” said Duda, whose term ends in 2025.
Duda’s visit comes as
House Republicans wrestle with a $95 billion foreign aid bill that would offer new funding to Ukraine, including money for the U.S. military to replace depleting weapon supplies. Polish leaders have been urging the House to approve the aid bill and ease domestic concerns. Many Trump allies in the House strongly oppose aiding Ukraine, even as the country warns that it is
struggling amid a fresh Russian offensive . Trump has said he might be open to aid in the form of a loan.One area where Trump and Duda agree concerning the conflict is a desire to push NATO members to increase their defense spending. Duda has
urged fellow members of the alliance to raise their spending to 3% of gross domestic product as Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine. This would represent a significant increase from the current commitment of 2% by 2024. Trump, in a surprising departure from U.S. tradition, has been critical of the Western alliance for a long time and has threatened not to defend member nations that do not reach the spending goal. This threat strikes at the core of the alliance’s
, which states that any attack against one NATO member will be treated as an attack against all. Article 5In February, Trump went even further, recalling that he had once told leaders that he would
“encourage” Russia to “do whatever they want” to members that are — in his words — “delinquent.” Trump’s campaign indicated that the two talked about the NATO proposal during the meeting. They also discussed Israel and the Middle East, Trump’s 2017 trip to Warsaw, “and many other topics related to achieving world peace,” the campaign said in its report, which described the men as “great friends.”
The visit was
received with mixed reactions in Poland , where concerns about Russia are high and Duda’s friendly relationship with Trump has sparked controversy.Poland’s centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political opponent of Duda, was critical of the dinner but expressed hope that Duda would use it as an opportunity “to take a stand in favor of the Western world, democracy, and Europe in this Ukrainian-Russian conflict.”
It’s the most recent in a series of meetings with foreign leaders as Europe prepares for the chance of a second Trump term.
