Trump to Meet Polish President Duda in New York on Wednesday

Jennifer Jacobs and Natalia Ojewska
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump will meet Polish President Andrzej Duda for a dinner at Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday, according to people familiar with the arrangements.

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The meeting will take place on the first day of Duda’s week-long trip to the US and Canada. The dinner with Trump isn’t mentioned in the official schedule of the trip, which includes meetings with United Nations’ Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Polish president confirmed the meeting to reporters shortly before his flight on Tuesday, but said it was agreed tentatively and “everything will come down to schedules.”

Duda will be the second leader from the European Union’s eastern member states to meet with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee this year. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last month in a meeting that was criticized by President Joe Biden. UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron also met with Trump recently.

Poland’s president has long boasted about his ties with Trump that go back to his first term in office, which overlapped with Trump’s presidency. On Tuesday, Duda said “they know each other well” and called the former US president a friend.

Duda famously asked Trump during a White House visit in 2018 to set up a permanent US military base, offering to call it “Fort Trump.” The relationship has put him at odds with Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who warned on Tuesday that Trump’s potential return to the White House would be detrimental to European security and the future of NATO.

The meeting comes as Speaker Mike Johnson plans separate US House votes this week on new aid to Israel and Ukraine, which could end a months-long Republican blockade on a $60 billion package for Kyiv.

Trump alarmed allies with his remarks earlier this year, where he appeared to suggest that he would encourage Russia to attack countries that didn’t meet the alliance’s defense spending obligations.

“Almost every appearance of President Trump clearly shows his rather anti-Ukrainian sentiment and pro-Russian attitude,” Tusk told reporters, saying he would encourage the president to “raise the issue of unequivocal support for the Western world, democracy and Europe in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict” during his meeting with Trump.

(Updates with comments from Duda in the third paragraph)

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