Włodzimierz Czarzasty, the Speaker of Poland’s parliament and leader of the Left Party, a coalition partner of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, has called US President Donald Trump “irrational” and a “leader of chaos”.
The Speaker’s remarks were made in an interview with the Financial Times published on April 12. He told the paper that he thought: “Trump is becoming a leader of chaos and I think that in many cases Trump’s behaviour is absolutely irrational.”
His comment was slammed by US ambassador to Poland Tom Rose who called Czarzasty a “menace” and pointed to the fact that he was once a member of the Polish Communist Party during the days of Soviet domination.
“The aim of his inflammatory rhetoric disparaging POTUS [the president of the United States] can only be to damage US-Poland ties, and weaken his own country. Perhaps as a notorious far-left, ex-Communist apparatchik, we shouldn’t be surprised,” Rose posted on X.
Rose had a similar dispute with Czarzasty in February this year when Czarzasty criticised Trump for seeking the Nobel Peace Prize and said that he would not be supporting such a notion when asked to do so by Republican Congressional leaders.
The ambassador decided to cut off all contact with the Speaker and accused Czarzasty of making “outrageous insults” against the US President.
At the time, Rose warned that the Speaker’s statements posed a serious obstacle to what he called the “excellent” relationship between the US administration and Tusk’s government.
Those good relations were maintained despite past criticism of Trump by Tusk and his foreign minister Radosław Sikorski – since Trump’s re-election, though, they have desisted from direct and personal attacks on the US President.
During February’s spat Tusk came to Czarzasty’s defence, telling Rose that “allies should respect, not lecture, each other”.
Neither Tusk nor other senior government figures have commented on the latest spat, though. That has come just a few days after the Wall Street Journal published a story claiming that the Trump administration was seriously examining the prospects of shifting US soldiers from Germany to Poland and other central European states as a sanction on western Europe for failing to support the US over the war with Iran.
Czarzasty has also consistently criticised the opposition Conservatives (PiS) aligned President Karol Nawrocki for his close relations with Trump accusing the Polish head of state of being servile to the US administration and calling the head of state “a fool”.
Trump backed Nawrocki during Poland’s presidential election last year and has since promised the Polish President that the US will maintain its contingent of 10,000 troops in the country.
Czarzasty was a businessman and a member of Poland’s broadcasting licensing body in the early 2000s before becoming involved in frontline politics for the Left Party.
He has led the Left Party since 2016 and in 2019 managed, together with other left-wing groupings, to ensure a return to parliament for his party after it had lost its parliamentary representation in the 2015 election.
In 2023 his party performed disappointingly in the election, losing votes and seats but was able to join Tusk’s ruling coalition as its left-wing flank.
Czarzasty became Speaker of Parliament in November last year as part of the coalition agreement that gives him substantial influence over the passage of legislation.
He has made a point of blocking legislative initiatives coming from the Nawrocki and has repeatedly clashed with him.
A few days ago, Czarzasty was instrumental in staging a ceremony of four constitutional court judges taking oaths of office in defiance of the President who had not approved the nominations.
