President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by Law and Justice, is seeking to leverage his connections with Trump as he battles Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who holds the country’s most powerful office.
For Law and Justice, it is “more beneficial than risky to be on very good terms with Donald Trump for many reasons,” said Wojciech Szacki, head of the political desk at the Polityka Insight think tank. “It gives them some leverage in internal politics because the president of Poland is the only person who has access to the White House right now.”
At a press conference in Warsaw on Friday, Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński praised Nawrocki’s “excellent relations with the American president” and hailed the alleged “success” of a Polish bid to get a permanent U.S. military base.
“A majority of Poles still think that what makes us safe is the presence of American soldiers in Poland,” said Szacki.
In the Cluster17 poll, 17 percent of all Polish respondents said Trump was “a friend of Europe” — the highest percentage among the seven EU countries polled.
NOTE: The Public First poll was conducted from Jun. 14 to Jun. 17, surveying more than 2,000 respondents each from U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Spain and Germany, and has an overall margin of error of ±2 percentage points. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error.