Meloni in the White House. Has Trump Forgotten Poland?*
Published in Rzeczpospolita
(Poland) on 17 April 2025
by Jędrzej Bielecki (link to original)
(Poland) on 17 April 2025
by Jędrzej Bielecki (link to original)
Translated from
by Danuta Kowalska.
Edited by Michelle Bisson.
On Thursday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni joined the list of Western European leaders from France, Britain and Ireland invited by Donald Trump to the White House during his first months in office.
What criteria does the U.S. president use when he chooses his most important partners from democratic Europe? As his relations with Vladimir Putin grow closer, the defense of Ukraine moves farther to the back of his mind. One might consider that this is the reason that neither President Andrzej Duda nor Prime Minister Donald Tusk has yet appeared in the Oval Office.
However, the American leader's first guests were Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, precisely because of Ukraine. While in the White House, they presented a draft European peacekeeping mission that would guarantee Kyiv's security.
The ideological closeness between Duda and Trump turned out to be of little importance. So, is Trump primarily motivated by ideology? One could argue that this is partly why Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was invited to Washington. Yet, it was Duda who had long been considered Trump's key ally, largely for ideological reasons. After all, in the spring of 2024, he supported Trump at a key moment in the election campaign, agreeing to a meeting in Trump Tower.
Given the situation, it is difficult to ignore the fact that Poland has not yet been included in the list of countries that Trump wants to devote his time to because he thinks it is simply too unimportant. We have ended up taking a backseat alongside Spain, whose prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has yet to visit the White House since Jan. 20. The United States has long targeted the Spanish government, both for its leftist beliefs and its embarrassingly low defense spending. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was also on the list of absentees, but since Trump returned to office, it is apparent that with Scholz, we are dealing with a politician who is leaving the stage and is not considered to be a partner for cooperation in Washington.
Trump remembered St. Patrick's Day. But not Casimir Pulaski Day. For Poland, however, any comparison with the visit of Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin to the White House is particularly bitter. Visiting the U.S. president on St. Patrick's Day in early March is a decades-old tradition. Trump, who breaks almost every convention, respected this one. However, he did not find time for President Duda, who, a few days earlier, visited the U.S. on the occasion of Poland's Casimir Pulaski Day.
*Editor’s note: the full original Polish version of this article is available with a paid subscription.
What criteria does the U.S. president use when he chooses his most important partners from democratic Europe? As his relations with Vladimir Putin grow closer, the defense of Ukraine moves farther to the back of his mind. One might consider that this is the reason that neither President Andrzej Duda nor Prime Minister Donald Tusk has yet appeared in the Oval Office.
However, the American leader's first guests were Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, precisely because of Ukraine. While in the White House, they presented a draft European peacekeeping mission that would guarantee Kyiv's security.
The ideological closeness between Duda and Trump turned out to be of little importance. So, is Trump primarily motivated by ideology? One could argue that this is partly why Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was invited to Washington. Yet, it was Duda who had long been considered Trump's key ally, largely for ideological reasons. After all, in the spring of 2024, he supported Trump at a key moment in the election campaign, agreeing to a meeting in Trump Tower.
Given the situation, it is difficult to ignore the fact that Poland has not yet been included in the list of countries that Trump wants to devote his time to because he thinks it is simply too unimportant. We have ended up taking a backseat alongside Spain, whose prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has yet to visit the White House since Jan. 20. The United States has long targeted the Spanish government, both for its leftist beliefs and its embarrassingly low defense spending. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was also on the list of absentees, but since Trump returned to office, it is apparent that with Scholz, we are dealing with a politician who is leaving the stage and is not considered to be a partner for cooperation in Washington.
Trump remembered St. Patrick's Day. But not Casimir Pulaski Day. For Poland, however, any comparison with the visit of Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin to the White House is particularly bitter. Visiting the U.S. president on St. Patrick's Day in early March is a decades-old tradition. Trump, who breaks almost every convention, respected this one. However, he did not find time for President Duda, who, a few days earlier, visited the U.S. on the occasion of Poland's Casimir Pulaski Day.
*Editor’s note: the full original Polish version of this article is available with a paid subscription.
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