Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden visited Warsaw where he met with President Andrzej Duda and participated in the Bucharest Nine meeting. The American leader also thanked the Poles for their support for Ukraine.
After the speech in the Royal Castle gardens, Biden was also supposed to meet with the leader of the Civic Platform (PO), Donald Tusk, and the mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski.
After the U.S. president’s speech, Radosław Sikorski, an MEP of the Civic Coalition, announced on Twitter that the “meeting has started.” However, it quickly transpired that the “meeting” between Biden and Polish opposition politicians was extremely short.
As reported by the wp.pl portal, “the conversation, or rather exchange of words, between Biden and Trzaskowski did not even last a minute.”
“The two entered, shook hands with the U.S. president, and left within less than a minute,” the Wprost weekly reported on the so-called “meetings” of Tusk and Trzaskowski with Biden.
Media reports contradict statements by the Warsaw president himself, who, in an interview with Polsat News, claimed he had spoken with Biden about U.S. support for Kyiv, thanked him for security guarantees for Poland, and raised the issue of the rule of law in the country.
According to wprost.pl, the original plan for Biden’s visit to Poland only included a meeting with Rafał Trzaskowski. It was to be organized off the record and for a very short time.
When news of this reached Donald Tusk and Senate Speaker Tomasz Grodzki, they both began to feverishly strive to be allowed to meet with the U.S. president. As a result, they pushed for a last-minute handshake, wprost.pl reports.
In the video of the “meeting” of the Civic Platform politicians with Biden, Rafał Trzaskowski, posing for photos with the U.S. president, talked to him for less than a minute, and even then he was rushed by the president’s security as he extended the time reserved for him.
Wprost reported how at the end of the meeting, the Warsaw mayor said, “Bye, guys,” as Biden’s security guards urged him to leave.
