Source: Politics<\/p>\n
When top figures in President Donald Trump\u2019s orbit descended on a small town in southeastern Poland this week to rally support for the right-wing candidate in that country\u2019s presidential election on Sunday, they put MAGA\u2019s ambitions abroad on full display.<\/p>\n
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Karol Nawrocki<\/a> \u201cjust as strong a leader\u201d as Trump, declaring \u201che needs to to be the next president of Poland.\u201d Matt Schlapp, chair of the pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference, which hosted the gathering, said electing candidates like Nawrocki is \u201cso important to the freedom of people everywhere,\u201d while John Eastman, who aided Trump\u2019s effort to overturn the 2020 election<\/a>, said Poland under Nawrocki would play \u201ca critical role in defeating [the] threat to Western civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n But if the conservative confab ahead of Poland\u2019s vote was an indication of how hard Trump\u2019s allies have been working to expand the MAGA brand across the globe, the results of recent elections, including in Romania<\/a>, Poland<\/a> and Canada<\/a>, suggest Trump\u2019s influence in some cases may not be helping.<\/p>\n \u201cJust like domestically, you see one step forward, two steps back sometimes,\u201d said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and State Department appointee in Trump’s first administration. \u201cThe thought of Trump and MAGA is sometimes more powerful than the reality.\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cHis thumbprint can help push in certain regions and countries, but there can also be some pushback.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s election to a second term in November emboldened far-right movements abroad. It gave Trump\u2019s allies hopes of putting like-minded leaders into positions of power, boosting parties that share his priorities and spreading his populist, hard-right politics beyond the U.S. Meanwhile, conservative politicians in other countries yoked themselves directly or stylistically to his brand.<\/p>\n In the months since, far-right parties have performed strongly in European elections<\/a>, including in Poland, Romania and Portugal, overperforming expectations and elevating their vote shares with electorates shifting to the right on issues like immigration. The hard-right in Europe, by most accounts<\/a>, is surging. But they\u2019re not vaulting into government like some Trump allies had predicted.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn’t say the right has ascended, I’d say it’s a mixed package,\u201d said Kurt Volker, who served as Trump\u2019s envoy for Ukraine during his first administration and ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush. \u201cThere is a movement effect where the far-right movements seem to draw energy from each other and do well. But there’s also this anti-Trump effect, where Trump has challenged a country or a leader and that has only backfired and helped them.\u201d<\/p>\n In Romania, hard-right presidential candidate George Simion, who spoke at this year\u2019s CPAC in Washington and appeared on Trump ally Steve Bannon\u2019s podcast just days before the country\u2019s election this month, lost to a centrist challenger after dominating the first round of voting. In Albania, conservatives hired former Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita to boost their fortunes<\/a>, only to see their candidate get trounced anyway.<\/p>\n And the movement is bracing for a close election on Sunday in Poland, where Nawrocki \u2014 who visited the White House<\/a> earlier this month \u2014 is locked in a tight race with centrist candidate Rafal Trzaskowski after finishing behind him in the first round.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a lot of political leaders here in the U.S. who are camping out in Poland to try to tilt it,\u201d said Randy Evans, who was ambassador to Luxembourg during Trump\u2019s first term. \u201cWhether or not that’s enough or not \u2026 I don’t know. I think it’s going to be very close.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s allies have been working since his first term to expand MAGA\u2019s influence abroad. Bannon, who had managed Trump\u2019s 2016 campaign, began traveling across Europe pitching himself as the mastermind behind a new global far-right alliance<\/a> called \u201cThe Movement.\u201d He even announced he would set up an academy<\/a> to train future right-wing political leaders at a former monastery outside Rome.<\/p>\n Those efforts largely fizzled at the time: Bannon\u2019s planned academy got caught up<\/a> in yearslong legal battles<\/a>, and support for far-right parties across the continent tanked<\/a> in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n But rising inflation and growing concerns over immigration helped far-right parties gain back support as the pandemic faded. By the time Trump won the election last November, many of those parties were resurging \u2014 and his victory emboldened them further, with far-right allies quickly seeking to tie themselves to the incoming U.S. president and his orbit.<\/p>\n When Vice President JD Vance chastised European leaders<\/a> for \u201crunning in fear of [their] own voters\u201d at the Munich Security Conference in February, he billed the Trump administration as an alternative model \u2014 the vanguard of a hard-right movement not only in the United States, but across the West.<\/p>\n \u201cMake Europe Great Again! MEGA, MEGA, MEGA,\u201d Elon Musk, Donald Trump\u2019s billionaire ally, posted on X<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n In the months since the vice president\u2019s appearance in Germany, hardline conservatives have had some success. In Portugal, the far-right Chega party surged<\/a>. And Reform UK, the party led by pro-Brexit leader Nigel Farage, made big gains<\/a> in the country\u2019s local elections earlier this month.<\/p>\n CPAC, which has been holding international conferences since 2017 \u2014 including in Japan, Australia, Brazil and Argentina \u2014 gathered supporters in Hungary following the Poland meeting this week.<\/p>\n Schlapp did not respond to a request for comment. But he told NPR<\/a>, \u201cThe one thing that’s undeniable is that everybody wants to know where Donald Trump is on the issues that matter to their country\u201d and said, \u201cThey’re really rooting for Donald Trump to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n But elsewhere abroad, MAGA-style politics not only has failed to spread \u2014 it has been a liability. In both Canada and Australia, Trump\u2019s combative and unpredictable trade policy led to an anti-Trump wave that helped tank right-wing candidates<\/a> who sought to emulate his rhetoric.<\/p>\n Canada\u2019s Pierre Poilievre ran on a \u201cCanada First\u201d slogan<\/a> and Australia\u2019s Peter Dutton proposed DOGE-style cuts<\/a> to government. But Trump\u2019s tariffs were deeply unpopular<\/a> with voters in both countries, and even though Poilievre and Dutton distanced themselves<\/a> from Trump in the final days of the campaign, voters punished them anyway.<\/p>\n Vance\u2019s speech in February \u201cgave the impression that this is becoming a transatlantic right-wing alliance,\u201d said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. \u201cSince then, the reality is \u2026 not as drastic as those worst-case scenarios. And that\u2019s not because they\u2019re not trying. You see how the White House is trying.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s allies went all-in on the May 18 election in Romania, which was the re-run of a November vote annulled over concerns that a Russian influence campaign on TikTok<\/a> had affected the outcome. Trump allies had criticized the decision to cancel the original results and bar the winning candidate, ultranationalist C\u0103lin Georgescu, from running in the new election.<\/p>\n MAGA loyalists spent months touting Simion, the hard-right candidate who promised to \u201cMake Romania Great Again.\u201d Less than two weeks before Election Day, Simion hosted CPAC\u2019s\u00a0 Schlapp<\/a> at a business roundtable in Bucharest, and two days before Romanian voters cast their ballots, Bannon hosted Simion on his \u201cWar Room\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cGeorge, you’ve got the entire MAGA movement here in the United States pulling for you,\u201d Bannon said<\/a>, predicting victory for the Trump-aligned candidate.<\/p>\n But when the votes were counted, it wasn\u2019t even close. Simion lost the election<\/a> by 7 points to Bucharest Mayor Nicu\u0219or Dan, a centrist candidate who promised closer ties with the European Union and NATO.<\/p>\n In Albania\u2019s May 11 parliamentary elections, where the conservative candidate, Sali Berisha, hired LaCivita to help his party make a political comeback, the party in interviews heralded<\/a> Trump and Berisha\u2019s \u201cremarkably similar profiles\u201d of being \u201cpersecuted by establishments\u201d and \u201ctargeted by their countries\u2019 justice systems.\u201d Berisha\u2019s supporters touted LaCivita\u2019s involvement as proof Berisha was anointed by the MAGA movement.<\/p>\n But on Election Day, Berisha\u2019s party lost badly<\/a>, handing incumbent Edi Rama and his Socialist Party another term in office.<\/p>\n Rama wasted no time in gloating: Hiring Trump\u2019s campaign strategist and thinking you can become Trump \u201cis like hiring a Hollywood hairdresser and thinking you\u2019ll become Brad Pitt,\u201d he told POLITICO after the vote.<\/p>\n LaCivita told POLITICO on Friday that the connection between MAGA in the U.S. and conservative movements abroad stems from a common concern about an \u201calignment of issues \u2014 governments using their judicial systems to prosecute political opponents, the rising cost of living, reduced opportunities and individual liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis alignment was defeated with President Trump\u2019s win in 2024, and while that success may not always be repeated worldwide \u2014 once again America is being looked at to provide leadership in securing freedom,\u201d he said in a text message. \u201cNot through the barrel of a gun \u2014 but politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump\u2019s \u201cmessage of restoring common sense, halting illegal immigration, and delivering peace resonates with not just Americans, but people around the world, which is why conservatives have been winning elections in all corners of the globe. He is simultaneously restoring America\u2019s strength on the world stage, as evidenced by the 15 foreign leaders who have visited the White House this term.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s allies have largely dismissed defeats abroad, with explanations ranging from blaming the \u201cdeep state\u201d to arguing that losing politicians were not sufficiently Trumpian to win.<\/p>\n “MAGA’s populist, nationalist, sovereignist right continues to rise despite the full force of the deep state being thrown against it,\u201d Bannon told POLITICO in response to the spate of recent elections.<\/p>\n \u201cThese people aren\u2019t Donald Trump. They\u2019re facsimiles,\u201d Raheem Kassam, a former Farage adviser and ex-Breitbart London editor, said of Simion and Nawrocki, noting that their parties are both part of a faction on the European level that has its roots more in traditional conservatism than the MAGA-style populism of far-right parties in Germany, Austria, France and others.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re cheap copies that have been run through a copy machine 40 times,\u201d he added. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s faded. It\u2019s counterfeit Trumpism.\u201d<\/p>\n Poland, where leaders of the right-wing Law and Justice Party have long cultivated ties to Trump and MAGA loyalists, will offer the next test of whether an affiliation with Trump can help put like-minded candidates over the finish line.<\/p>\n Nawrocki, the Law and Justice Party-backed candidate for president, has gone all-in on his efforts to tie himself to Trump \u2014 including flying to Washington in early May for a photo op at the White House<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump said, \u2018you will win,\u2019” Nawrocki told<\/a> the Polish broadcaster TV Republika. \u201cI read it as a kind of wish for my success in the upcoming elections, and also awareness of it, and after this whole day I can say that the American administration is aware of what is happening in Poland.\u201d<\/p>\n But public opinion polling shows Poles, who have long been among the U.S.\u2019 biggest fans in Europe, are souring on both the country and its current leader amid tariffs and Trump\u2019s close ties to Russia \u2014 a tricky issue in a country where many people still view Russia as a threat.<\/p>\n Asked by a Polish public polling agency in April whether the U.S. has a positive impact on the world, just 20 percent said yes \u2014 the lowest figure<\/a> since the poll was first conducted in 1987, and down from 55 percent a year ago. And 60 percent of Poles said they were \u201cconcerned\u201d about Trump\u2019s presidency, compared with just 15 percent who were \u201chopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrump is the most unpopular U.S. president in Europe,\u201d said Milan Nic, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cThis means that to some supporters of Nawrocki, the photo from White House with Trump is no longer as powerful as it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Volker, the former Ukraine envoy, said right-wing parties need to walk a tightrope of embracing some of the MAGA zeal \u2014 but without linking themselves too closely to the polarizing U.S. president.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to think of Trump as like fire: You can’t be too close, but you can’t be too far away,\u201d said Volker. \u201cIf you get too close to Trump you get burned, and if you\u2019re too far away you\u2019re not relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n