The crazy twists and turns continue with Polish President Duda caught visiting Trump in his golden tower on Wednesday in New York. They apparently sat for a two-and-a-half hour dinner, after which Statesman Don boasted of how much he gave Poland during his four years. This follows closely on the heels of an endorsement from Lettuce-head Lizz Truss, the former PM of Lesser Britain.
Liz doesn't matter much, but Duda is still head of state even if his political party suffered badly in the parliamentary elections and he now finds himself essentially rendered moot, as most of the power in Poland is vested in the parliament. The White House is choosing not to react, which is probably the best course. Otherwise, Biden would just be feeding into Trump's enormous ego.
I'm sure the endorsement and visit were arranged by billionaire backers anxious to give Trump the illusion of still being a major player, even if he knows nothing of what is going on in the world. It's not like he ever did. He looked at the world stage to see what he could gain politically from it, like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem to appease his conservative base. He even endorsed Netanyahu's potential West Bank land grab, although it was never meant as anything other than a way to entice Arab nations into normalizing relations with Israel, but Trump acted like it was a huge diplomatic coup. It was his son-in-law Jared who did all the legwork. In the end, it set the stage for the conflagration we now see in Israel, which threatens to spill over to the Arab world at large.
Or exchanging "love letters" with Kim Jong-Un, as if he was going to finally broker an enormous peace deal with North Korea that would make the world a safer place. He was so smitten with Little Kim that he tried to hold onto these letters after he left office.
Trump is a menace, yet you still see world leaders fawn over him. Orban visited him in Mar-a-Lago last month. No one could understand this move as the Hungarian tyrant wasn't planning on visiting the White House. Instead, he had a speaking engagement with the Heritage Foundation and figured he would give his ol' comrade in arms a social visit. Of course it gave conservatives a golden opportunity to bash the "liberal international order."
Duda has made himself an utter embarrassment. Ever since Tusk and his coalition party took control of parliament last Fall, Duda has been relatively inconsequential. For a while, he was one of the major players on the world stage in soliciting support for Ukraine. Now his political party actively works against Ukrainian interests by blocking Ukrainian grain at the border, as they claim it is undermining Polish grain prices. This wasn't a grassroots protest. They also planned to blockade Lithuanian borders over Ukraine grain. These tractor protests were engineered by Duda's and Kaczinski's Law and Justice Party, with the acronym PiS in Polish.
For years they had tried to put in place an autocracy not much unlike Orban was able to do in Hungary. PiS controlled almost every aspect of Polish society, including the media, which made it very difficult for opposition parties to challenge them publicly. Donald Tusk had enough and was able to form a broad coalition of parties that was just enough to gain the majority in the Parliament. He did so by literally taking his message to the streets with a million-man march on Warsaw. It was impossible not to see them. Duda had no choice but to accept the election results under constitutional law, but first gave Kazcinski the opportunity to form a ruling coalition, which he failed to do.
Duda comes across as a bright articulate man, unlike Orban, and so for many years the West let itself be fooled by his seemingly cosmopolitan image. Kazcinski was the ugly face of the autocratic movement in Poland, pressing for severe anti-abortion, anti-gay and numerous other socially restrictive laws that would make religious conservatives in America masturbate with excitement.
This is why Putin thought he had allies in both Poland and Hungary when he invaded Ukraine in 2022. Putin had been cultivating these ties for years, actively supporting the autocratic regimes in these countries, and pushing the idea of partitions as far as back as 2008. When he first invaded Ukraine in 2014, these talks resurfaced, and once again in 2022. Orban was anxious to distance himself from the outlandish partitions despite continuing trade ties with Russia in defiance of EU bans. As for Poland, PiS became Ukraine's most outspoken supporter and chief critic of Moscow. Since then, Putin has worked hard to promote the idea that it was Poland and Hungary that wanted to partition Ukraine, and that Russia is some sort of savior.
If all this sounds like a redux of WWII, it's no surprise. Lithuanian PM Šimonytė referred to the invasion of Ukraine as a "1939 moment," the year Germany invaded Poland, and stressed that if we don't stop Russia now, it will then launch an assault on all of Europe. For the most part, her warning was met with deaf ears in the West. NATO countries were reluctant to provide any more than the bare minimum to Ukraine in terms of weapons, leaving the US to cover much of the war effort. Even still, Biden was slow to give anything more than what his administration regarded as defensive capabilities. Even that wasn't enough, as Ukraine has had to beg for Patriot missile systems to spare its cities from the ceaseless missiles and drone attacks every week, which have taken out big parts of its energy infrastructure. Russia even blew up the Kakhovka dam to flood the lower half off the Dnipro river so that Ukraine was unable to launch an offensive last Spring. Once again, fears swirl that Russia might blow up the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under its control. The ultimate dirty bomb, and like everything else would try to blame Ukraine.
The only consolation is that Russia is no great military machine like Germany was back in 1939. It has lost so much of its arsenal in Ukraine that it would take a monumental effort to even take the Baltics at this point. It has lost at least 3000 tanks, countless other heavy equipment and has even seen its ships sunk in the Black Sea by aquatic drone attacks. It had so few missiles and drones left that it had to turn to Iran and North Korea to resupply its diminishing reserves. But, Putin has Russia on a war economy so it is only a matter of time before he rebuilds his arsenal.
In the face of all this, Liz Truss has the audacity to say that Trump would make America stronger. This is the same guy who repeatedly threatened to pull the US out of NATO, leaving European countries to fend for themselves. The same guy whose surrogates in Congress have stalled aid packages to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan for the past 6 months, and only now plan on bringing military aid packages for Israel and Ukraine up in separate votes this weekend. As Prime Minister, she didn't even outlast a head of lettuce, and is dragging her party further down with the outlandish interview she gave BBC. Nigel Farage, eat your heart out.
As for Duda, one can only speculate on his interest in meeting with Trump. Some say he tried to get Trump to quit blocking the aid package to Ukraine. After all, Mike Johnson finally put separate military aid packages to a floor vote this weekend with them all likely to pass. If so, then the impromptu visit was worth it. Otherwise, he was just playing into Trump's hand.
This is why I don't worry too much about these international endorsements. They are literally coming from losers, like himself. There's no other Brexit around the corner. In fact, the Tories are in danger of losing massively in the next election due to their failed leadership over the past 14 years, in particular the last 8 years in going through five prime ministers. Two were removed by votes within their own party, and two others tendered their resignations in the face of brutal opposition. The only thing Trump has to point to as a positive harbinger was the election in Argentina that saw chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei come to power with threats of cutting the budget like Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It made for juicy print last Fall but no one cares anymore. Trump met him too in February.
Once again, it looks like another season of Celebrity Apprentice.
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