Right-wing figures around the world celebrated Karol Nawrocki’s defeat of Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.
Far-right candidate Karol Nawrocki emerged Monday as the narrow winner of Poland’s presidential election, a contest in which the Trump administration in the U.S. and Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, weighed in on the side of their ideological compatriot.
Nawrocki’s victory over Rafał Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor who was representing the party of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, was celebrated by right-wing figures around the world, including Orbán and Jordan Bardella, the head of France’s far-right National Rally party.
“The Polish people have spoken and their free and democratic choice must be respected, including by the Brussels leaders who ardently hoped for their defeat,” Bardella wrote on social media following news that Nawrocki, a historian and “former football hooligan” backed by Poland’s Law and Justice Party, prevailed in one of the closest elections in the country’s history.
Nawrocki’s win came days after U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem endorsed him during a speech at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering in Poland last week.
