Polish President Andrzej Duda wasted no time in congratulating Republican candidate Donald Trump on his convincing victory in the US presidential election on November 6, reflecting the Polish populist right’s hopes that Trump’s return to the presidency will help change the vibe in Poland, too.

Duda’s Law and Justice (PiS) party must win May’s presidential election in Poland in order to prevent the incumbent coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk from seizing full power. While governing with a parliamentary majority, Tusk does not have enough votes to override a presidential veto, which Duda has wielded against crucial legislation.

“Congratulations, Mr. President! You made it happen!” Duda said (in English) on X in a post adorned with a string of clapping emojis and Polish and US flags.

Four years ago, Duda belatedly messaged Joe Biden in a much-ridiculed post that congratulated the Democrat “for a successful presidential campaign”,  adding, however, that the wait for the “nomination by the Electoral College” was still underway.

PiS hopes that Trump’s stunning success will translate into their own in May. 

The party backed Trump in all his three campaigns and hosted Trump during his visit to Poland in 2017.

PiS will most certainly underscore its reportedly good relations with the American president during the campaign, especially in the context of national security – despite worries that Trump might actually compromise it by seeking a deal with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, cementing the latter’s gains in Ukraine and emboldening him to go for more.

“Trump's victory gives PiS a strong psychological boost. It reinforces the belief that it’s possible to make a comeback … and that Biden's four years may have been just a brief episode—just as Tusk's four years could also prove to be only temporary,” former President Aleksander Kwasniewski told Radio Zet.

Other important PiS figures were also quick with their reactions.

“Well, Mr. President - you did it! You fired another person from The Oval Office. SIMPLY AMAZING. Congratulations!” former PiS PM Mateusz Morawiecki said – also in English – on X, referring to Trump’s television show The Apprentice.

“Donald Trump” chanted the PiS caucus in the Polish parliament as a new session got underway.

The ruling coalition was less enthused about Trump than PiS but did not mark the comeback as anything problematic – at least for now – and stressed the Polish-US alliance, a Warsaw policy constant.

“Congratulations to Donald Trump on winning the election. I look forward to our cooperation for the good of the American and Polish nations,” Tusk said on X.

Tusk knows Trump from his stint as the European Council President in 2014-2019 during the latter's first term in Oval Office.

“This is not the end of the world. It is the beginning of a new world, in which Poland will need to find its place according to a simple principle. Europe and Poland have received a clear signal that they must build their own capabilities—both economic and in terms of security,” the parliament’s Speaker Szymon Holownia told a briefing.

Holownia thus echoed European concerns that the Trump administration will not maintain as strong transatlantic relations as Biden’s did.