Former American president, Donald Trump, and the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, met on Wednesday to discuss the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East over dinner in New York.
According to AFP, the former US president’s reelection campaign said in a statement.
The meeting was the latest in a series of meetings with foreign leaders as Europe braces for the possibility of a second Trump term.
The presumptive Republican nominee hosted Duda at Trump Tower in Manhattan, where the two discussed the war in Ukraine and Duda’s push to boost Nato members’ defence spending, according to a statement from Trump’s campaign.
“He’s done a fantastic job and he’s my friend, and we had four great years together” when the two were president at the same time, Trump said, standing alongside Duda in a video clip posted on Trump’s Truth Social account.
“We may have to do it again.”
The Trump campaign said the two men discussed Duda’s proposal for NATO countries to increase their target for defence spending from two per cent of GDP to three per cent.
Trump has often criticized NATO and said its members do not pay what he calls their fair share.
“They also discussed the war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict with Israel in the Middle East, and many other topics having to do with getting to world peace,” the Trump campaign said.
When not tied up in legal proceedings, the Republican White House candidate has been conducting a kind of shadow diplomacy, as other countries prepare for the possibility of a second Trump presidency.
He has been taking meetings with global leaders and criticizing he foreign policy of his November opponent, President Joe Biden.
Trump discussed NATO policy and the Ukraine war with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron last week, and entertained Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at his Florida residence Mar-a-Lago last month.
Duda and Trump were close allies during the 77-year-old’s previous Oval Office tenure, with Poland prioritizing its relationship with the United States — sometimes to the detriment of its ties with the European Union.
Conservative Duda even proposed building a “Fort Trump” US military base on Polish soil.
Amid Trump’s false declaration questioning his own 2020 election loss, Duda took more than a month to congratulate Biden on his presidential win.
