Politics
MAGA-branded candidates confront their limits abroad, even as far-right surges
When top figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit descended on a small town in southeastern Poland this week to rally support for the right-wing candidate in that country’s presidential election on Sunday, they put MAGA’s ambitions abroad on full display.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Karol Nawrocki “just as strong a leader” as Trump, declaring “he needs to to be the next president of Poland.” Matt Schlapp, chair of the pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference, which hosted the gathering, said electing candidates like Nawrocki is “so important to the freedom of people everywhere,” while John Eastman, who aided Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, said Poland under Nawrocki would play “a critical role in defeating [the] threat to Western civilization.”
But if the conservative confab ahead of Poland’s vote was an indication of how hard Trump’s allies have been working to expand the MAGA brand across the globe, the results of recent elections, including in Romania, Poland and Canada, suggest Trump’s influence in some cases may not be helping.
“Just like domestically, you see one step forward, two steps back sometimes,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and State Department appointee in Trump’s first administration. “The thought of Trump and MAGA is sometimes more powerful than the reality.”
He said, “His thumbprint can help push in certain regions and countries, but there can also be some pushback.”
Trump’s election to a second term in November emboldened far-right movements abroad. It gave Trump’s allies hopes of putting like-minded leaders into positions of power, boosting parties that share his priorities and spreading his populist, hard-right politics beyond the U.S. Meanwhile, conservative politicians in other countries yoked themselves directly or stylistically to his brand.
In the months since, far-right parties have performed strongly in European elections, including in Poland, Romania and Portugal, overperforming expectations and elevating their vote shares with electorates shifting to the right on issues like immigration. The hard-right in Europe, by most accounts, is surging. But they’re not vaulting into government like some Trump allies had predicted.
“I wouldn’t say the right has ascended, I’d say it’s a mixed package,” said Kurt Volker, who served as Trump’s envoy for Ukraine during his first administration and ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush. “There is a movement effect where the far-right movements seem to draw energy from each other and do well. But there’s also this anti-Trump effect, where Trump has challenged a country or a leader and that has only backfired and helped them.”
In Romania, hard-right presidential candidate George Simion, who spoke at this year’s CPAC in Washington and appeared on Trump ally Steve Bannon’s podcast just days before the country’s election this month, lost to a centrist challenger after dominating the first round of voting. In Albania, conservatives hired former Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita to boost their fortunes, only to see their candidate get trounced anyway.
And the movement is bracing for a close election on Sunday in Poland, where Nawrocki — who visited the White House earlier this month — is locked in a tight race with centrist candidate Rafal Trzaskowski after finishing behind him in the first round.
“We have a lot of political leaders here in the U.S. who are camping out in Poland to try to tilt it,” said Randy Evans, who was ambassador to Luxembourg during Trump’s first term. “Whether or not that’s enough or not … I don’t know. I think it’s going to be very close.”
Trump’s allies have been working since his first term to expand MAGA’s influence abroad. Bannon, who had managed Trump’s 2016 campaign, began traveling across Europe pitching himself as the mastermind behind a new global far-right alliance called “The Movement.” He even announced he would set up an academy to train future right-wing political leaders at a former monastery outside Rome.
Those efforts largely fizzled at the time: Bannon’s planned academy got caught up in yearslong legal battles, and support for far-right parties across the continent tanked in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
But rising inflation and growing concerns over immigration helped far-right parties gain back support as the pandemic faded. By the time Trump won the election last November, many of those parties were resurging — and his victory emboldened them further, with far-right allies quickly seeking to tie themselves to the incoming U.S. president and his orbit.
When Vice President JD Vance chastised European leaders for “running in fear of [their] own voters” at the Munich Security Conference in February, he billed the Trump administration as an alternative model — the vanguard of a hard-right movement not only in the United States, but across the West.
“Make Europe Great Again! MEGA, MEGA, MEGA,” Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s billionaire ally, posted on X earlier this year.
In the months since the vice president’s appearance in Germany, hardline conservatives have had some success. In Portugal, the far-right Chega party surged. And Reform UK, the party led by pro-Brexit leader Nigel Farage, made big gains in the country’s local elections earlier this month.
CPAC, which has been holding international conferences since 2017 — including in Japan, Australia, Brazil and Argentina — gathered supporters in Hungary following the Poland meeting this week.
Schlapp did not respond to a request for comment. But he told NPR, “The one thing that’s undeniable is that everybody wants to know where Donald Trump is on the issues that matter to their country” and said, “They’re really rooting for Donald Trump to succeed.”
But elsewhere abroad, MAGA-style politics not only has failed to spread — it has been a liability. In both Canada and Australia, Trump’s combative and unpredictable trade policy led to an anti-Trump wave that helped tank right-wing candidates who sought to emulate his rhetoric.
Canada’s Pierre Poilievre ran on a “Canada First” slogan and Australia’s Peter Dutton proposed DOGE-style cuts to government. But Trump’s tariffs were deeply unpopular with voters in both countries, and even though Poilievre and Dutton distanced themselves from Trump in the final days of the campaign, voters punished them anyway.
Vance’s speech in February “gave the impression that this is becoming a transatlantic right-wing alliance,” said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “Since then, the reality is … not as drastic as those worst-case scenarios. And that’s not because they’re not trying. You see how the White House is trying.”
Trump’s allies went all-in on the May 18 election in Romania, which was the re-run of a November vote annulled over concerns that a Russian influence campaign on TikTok had affected the outcome. Trump allies had criticized the decision to cancel the original results and bar the winning candidate, ultranationalist Călin Georgescu, from running in the new election.
MAGA loyalists spent months touting Simion, the hard-right candidate who promised to “Make Romania Great Again.” Less than two weeks before Election Day, Simion hosted CPAC’s Schlapp at a business roundtable in Bucharest, and two days before Romanian voters cast their ballots, Bannon hosted Simion on his “War Room” podcast.
“George, you’ve got the entire MAGA movement here in the United States pulling for you,” Bannon said, predicting victory for the Trump-aligned candidate.
But when the votes were counted, it wasn’t even close. Simion lost the election by 7 points to Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan, a centrist candidate who promised closer ties with the European Union and NATO.
In Albania’s May 11 parliamentary elections, where the conservative candidate, Sali Berisha, hired LaCivita to help his party make a political comeback, the party in interviews heralded Trump and Berisha’s “remarkably similar profiles” of being “persecuted by establishments” and “targeted by their countries’ justice systems.” Berisha’s supporters touted LaCivita’s involvement as proof Berisha was anointed by the MAGA movement.
But on Election Day, Berisha’s party lost badly, handing incumbent Edi Rama and his Socialist Party another term in office.
Rama wasted no time in gloating: Hiring Trump’s campaign strategist and thinking you can become Trump “is like hiring a Hollywood hairdresser and thinking you’ll become Brad Pitt,” he told Blue Light News after the vote.
LaCivita told Blue Light News on Friday that the connection between MAGA in the U.S. and conservative movements abroad stems from a common concern about an “alignment of issues — governments using their judicial systems to prosecute political opponents, the rising cost of living, reduced opportunities and individual liberties.”
“This alignment was defeated with President Trump’s win in 2024, and while that success may not always be repeated worldwide — once again America is being looked at to provide leadership in securing freedom,” he said in a text message. “Not through the barrel of a gun — but politics.”
Trump spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump’s “message of restoring common sense, halting illegal immigration, and delivering peace resonates with not just Americans, but people around the world, which is why conservatives have been winning elections in all corners of the globe. He is simultaneously restoring America’s strength on the world stage, as evidenced by the 15 foreign leaders who have visited the White House this term.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies have largely dismissed defeats abroad, with explanations ranging from blaming the “deep state” to arguing that losing politicians were not sufficiently Trumpian to win.
“MAGA’s populist, nationalist, sovereignist right continues to rise despite the full force of the deep state being thrown against it,” Bannon told Blue Light News in response to the spate of recent elections.
“These people aren’t Donald Trump. They’re facsimiles,” Raheem Kassam, a former Farage adviser and ex-Breitbart London editor, said of Simion and Nawrocki, noting that their parties are both part of a faction on the European level that has its roots more in traditional conservatism than the MAGA-style populism of far-right parties in Germany, Austria, France and others.
“They’re cheap copies that have been run through a copy machine 40 times,” he added. “It doesn’t work. It’s faded. It’s counterfeit Trumpism.”
Poland, where leaders of the right-wing Law and Justice Party have long cultivated ties to Trump and MAGA loyalists, will offer the next test of whether an affiliation with Trump can help put like-minded candidates over the finish line.
Nawrocki, the Law and Justice Party-backed candidate for president, has gone all-in on his efforts to tie himself to Trump — including flying to Washington in early May for a photo op at the White House.
“President Trump said, ‘you will win,’” Nawrocki told the Polish broadcaster TV Republika. “I read it as a kind of wish for my success in the upcoming elections, and also awareness of it, and after this whole day I can say that the American administration is aware of what is happening in Poland.”
But public opinion polling shows Poles, who have long been among the U.S.’ biggest fans in Europe, are souring on both the country and its current leader amid tariffs and Trump’s close ties to Russia — a tricky issue in a country where many people still view Russia as a threat.
Asked by a Polish public polling agency in April whether the U.S. has a positive impact on the world, just 20 percent said yes — the lowest figure since the poll was first conducted in 1987, and down from 55 percent a year ago. And 60 percent of Poles said they were “concerned” about Trump’s presidency, compared with just 15 percent who were “hopeful.”
“Trump is the most unpopular U.S. president in Europe,” said Milan Nic, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “This means that to some supporters of Nawrocki, the photo from White House with Trump is no longer as powerful as it used to be.”
Volker, the former Ukraine envoy, said right-wing parties need to walk a tightrope of embracing some of the MAGA zeal — but without linking themselves too closely to the polarizing U.S. president.
“You have to think of Trump as like fire: You can’t be too close, but you can’t be too far away,” said Volker. “If you get too close to Trump you get burned, and if you’re too far away you’re not relevant.”
Michigan Democrats’ scramble to unify after a brutal primary continued Friday with a preplanned rally that brought together the statewide ticket.
It also brought out Pete Buttigieg, a former and potentially future presidential candidate, whose presence helped underscore the stakes not just in November, but for 2028.
Holding the Michigan Senate seat is key to Democrats’ hopes of winning back the upper chamber. It is also a major battleground state that has now voted for President Donald Trump in two of the last three presidential elections, even as it sends Democrats like Elissa Slotkin to the Senate. Michigan is now poised to become an early presidential nominating state, giving it outsized influence on the 2028 contest.
Buttigieg laid out, in explicit terms, the broader stakes of a fractured Democratic coalition heading into the general election: “The stakes are high, and people from around the country, people from around the world, are watching the state of Michigan right now to see if we have the capability to put together that coalition to win.”
“We’re going to win because we know what it means to focus on what’s at stake, to lock arms as allies after a spirited primary, to pull together in common cause,” said Buttigieg, who stayed neutral in the state’s Senate primary, at the Michigan Democratic Party’s general election kickoff rally.
Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday defeated Rep. Haley Stevens after a bruising primary that exposed ideological and demographic divisions within the party. He now faces Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in the general election, and he has to figure out how to pull moderate and establishment Democrats back into the fold to hold the seat.
Republicans, seeing an opening with Black and Jewish voters who broke more for Stevens, are already trying to peel away parts of the Democratic coalition. They view Michigan as one of their best pickup opportunities this cycle.
Buttigieg, who represents the party’s more moderate flank, used his remarks Friday to explicitly appeal to Democrats across the spectrum — and even some Republicans.
“Wherever you sit, in this big tent of ours, and it is a big tent, but whatever corner of that tent you think of as home, there is a set of things, and I mean big, big things, where we agree with each other, we agree with most Michiganders, and Washington and Lansing Republicans disagree with us,” he said. “That’s what’s at stake right now, and it’s not all about left, right, and center, Democrat and Republican.”
Buttigieg’s remarks — and the early unification around El-Sayed in one of the nation’s most important battlegrounds — underscores the delicate balancing act party leaders have to contend with. After a string of progressive victories through the spring, establishment Democrats in particular are trying to rally behind their new nominees without necessarily embracing every part of the politics that carried them across the finish line.
That dance showed up subtly throughout the speeches on Friday night.
Buttigieg at one point framed El-Sayed’s position as wanting “to expand affordable health care and keep more money in your pocket,” whereas Rogers “voted against the Affordable Care Act.” Buttigieg notably did not use the phrase “Medicare for All” to address one of El-Sayed’s signature progressive positions.
El-Sayed, for his part, also made an explicit effort to turn the page.
“In the spirit of unity, in the spirit of the work, in the spirit of coming together, I want to thank both of my colleagues who ran, Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow, for an incredible race,” he said. “Their incredible public service in the state of Michigan, and I cannot wait to see what both of them will do next.”
But he signaled that the progressive policy positions that powered his campaign would remain central to his general election stump. He reiterated his support for Medicare for All and railed against “the system of super PACs” and the millions of outside money flooding into politics.
And he sharply criticized Rogers, who, along with his fellow Republicans, have dramatically increased their attacks against El-Sayed since he won the primary, offering an early glimpse of what is likely to be a combative and divisive general election.
“They don’t know who we fight for,” El-Sayed said. “We fight for the families barely able to put their groceries in the cart and check out, we fight for the mom who’s worried about the child care she needs to be able to work a job that barely pays enough, we fight for the folks who are afraid about what happens if they get sick. We fight for each other, and we don’t back down.”
Tennessee GOP Rep. Andy Ogles was ousted by a Republican challenger on Thursday, a blow to President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson who tried to boost his campaign in the final days.
Former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher won the GOP primary for the 5th District after outraising Ogles, receiving a late endorsement from GOP Gov. Bill Lee and seeing a flood of outside money on his behalf from a renewable energy super PAC.
Ultimately, that spending, coupled with a newly redrawn district that forced Ogles to reach new voters, helped end his reelection bid. Ogles has also faced a number of controversies since he was first elected in 2022.
He deleted a homophobic social media post that was denounced by members of his own party in June, and he drew severe backlash for another post in which he said “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” In 2024, the FBI searched Ogles’ phone during an investigation into campaign finance records, which came after a watchdog group filed an ethics complaint into his use of campaign funds. And in 2023, he faced scrutiny for false claims about his resume.
Ogles’ loss makes him the second Trump-endorsed candidate to lose a primary this week, after a Michigan House candidate who had the president’s backing fell to a challenger who had already dropped out.
Hatcher will face the Democratic mayor of Columbia, Tennessee, Chaz Molder, in November. Molder has posted strong fundraising hauls, while Hatcher will basically be starting from scratch.
But Republicans redrew the seat to favor Trump by 23 points after the Supreme Court severely limited the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, leaving Hatcher as the front-runner.
HIDALGO, Texas — Bobby Pulido is learning that the bright lights of politics can be even harsher than music superstardom.
For the past several months, the Latin Grammy-winning singer and local megacelebrity has been the subject of a steady stream of national headlines scrutinizing his former professional relationship with a one-time bandmate who was imprisoned on child sex molestation charges. He’s also faced criticism for past social media posts that included racial, sexist and homophobic slurs and comments.
During a recent interview with Blue Light News — after a weeknight meet-and-greet with voters in the same stadium where he performed his final concert in November 2025 — Pulido struck a defensive tone about the scandals that have plagued his campaign.
“I apologize right now,” Pulido said, referring to the social media posts. “I’ll tell you right now, that way you’ll never ask me again. I apologize for everything that I’ve ever joked about that offended anybody. But I can’t continue to revisit every single one.”
Pulido also insisted he did nothing wrong in his working relationship with Frankie Caballero, maintaining he did not know about his former accordionist’s child molestation charges. He expects opponents to “keep dripping, dripping, dripping, dripping” new social media posts.
“I’ve been an open book for 30 years,” he said. “I was on Twitter way before I thought about running for office. They’re gonna keep going to old tweets, and there’s a lot of tweets in there that I’m embarrassed of. There’s jokes that I’ve told that I apologize for, and I’ve owned up to them. I’m like, man, that makes me cringe, and I’ve publicly apologized.”
Pulido is one of House Democrats’ prized battleground recruits and a key part of their plan to flip control of the lower chamber. The first-time candidate is widely known in Texas’ 15th District for his singing career, and he hopes to capitalize on voters’ anti-incumbency angst in his bid against GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz in a newly redrawn district that President Donald Trump won by 18 points in 2024.
Recent polling shows the race within the margin of error or Pulido leading, thanks in large part to his near-universal name ID. But while voters have shown a strong interest in political outsiders, those outsiders are also untested — and new revelations can swamp news cycles and potentially their chances.
The New York Post first reported in April on Pulido’s past relationship to Caballero, a registered sex offender who was imprisoned for indecent contact with an eight-year-old girl. Pulido told Blue Light News he first learned that Caballero was incarcerated on sex charges from the Post report, and Pulido’s campaign says the singer’s management company cut ties with Caballero after learning about a domestic abuse charge in 2021.
Pulido said he’d asked Caballero why he was in prison. “Transferring illegal aliens. That’s what he told me,” he told Blue Light News. “And I knew he had a lot of substance abuse issues, and he violated a lot of his paroles. Those were the things that he told me.” (Pulido’s campaign told the Texas Tribune in July that Pulido only knew Caballero struggled with addiction.)
In June, Axios reported Caballero performed with Pulido at a middle school benefit concert in 2018, where children were present, after being released from prison. When asked if he regretted having Caballero play there, Pulido said he did — knowing what he knows now.
“Without me knowing, it’s hard for me to say that,” he said. “Me, that I know now, yes. I wish I wouldn’t have taken him there.”
Caballero could not be reached for comment.
Pulido’s past social media posts have also come back to haunt the singer-turned-politician. In Twitter posts between 2013 and 2018, Pulido used homophobic and sexist Spanish-language slurs which translate to “f-g,” “f—-t” and “p—y.” In several other posts, he used the word “prieto,” a term referring to dark-skinned individuals many view as pejorative. The posts were first reported by NBC News and reviewed by Blue Light News. In another 2013 Spanish-language post reviewed by Blue Light News, Pulido joked that Mexican actor Mauricio Islas “isn’t a f-g, respect him. His boyfriend is.”
Islas, whose partner is a woman, did not respond to a request for comment.
Pulido told Blue Light News some of the remarks were made in jest toward personal friends. “That’s how we joke. I would never tell a stranger that,” he said.
He defended his use of the racial term as a cultural misunderstanding. “In our culture, we call each other that. It’s like Black people calling each other the n-word,” he said. “Would somebody that called another Black person the n-word be accused of racism? But they want to come and translate what I said to this guy, which is how we say it and we’re joking, they wanted to make it seem like I’m telling some complete stranger that. That’s not what it is.”
“I’m not making excuses,” Pulido added. “Would you have to apologize to your friend that you joke like that with, that doesn’t have a problem with anything you say? I don’t feel like I should have to apologize to them because they’re my friends.”
This isn’t the first time he’s flashed irritation when asked about his past posts, saying they distract from issues like affordability and immigration that voters care about. Pulido let loose on the New York Post when the paper reached out for comment about some other controversial social media posts. “We’ve been getting the same recycled tabloid nonsense since last October,” he said in a July video posted to his social media channels.
“And for whatever reporter that wants to keep asking,” he said in Spanish, “que no mamen, Kool-Aids. Now go translate that.” The colloquial phrase translates roughly to “don’t be jerks, assholes” or “don’t be stupid, assholes.”
De La Cruz’s campaign hopes to make hay out of the issues. In a statement, James Shook, the representative’s campaign manager, said Pulido is a “product of the corrupt compadre system that looks out for itself and everybody else is expected to look away.”
In press releases, De La Cruz’s campaign has pointed out apparent inconsistencies in Pulido’s statements. They note that Pulido told The Monitor he fired Caballero in 1996, but Caballero appears on two of Pulido’s albums through 1999. In a 2019 podcast, Pulido suggested he got Caballero out of jail; he told Bloomberg this year that was “hyperbolic” and he “misspoke.”
“Bobby Pulido walked a man convicted of molesting an eight-year-old girl onto a middle school event in this community, and hid his sex offender status from parents,” Shook said. “This is someone he toured with for years and is on tape bragging he personally bailed him out of jail. The only question left is why he thought he would get away with it.”
But there are signs that voters have become increasingly desensitized to scandal. A new Blue Light News Poll found a significant share of voters — both Republican and Democrat — say they would stick with their preferred candidate even if they were caught accepting gifts from lobbyists, exploiting tax loopholes or making antisemitic posts. Democrats drew a harsher line when it came to accusations of sexual violence and sexual assault. Voters were not polled on past use of homophobic or gender slurs on social media, or on relationships with sex offenders.
Some of Pulido’s supporters who know his family largely shrug off the headlines.
Esmeralda Knapp, a hairstylist in McAllen, said she will vote for Pulido solely because his uncle, a former county judge, helped secure Knapp’s brother’s release from prison many years ago. Bob Villarreal, a retired teacher in Edinburg, reminisced about the time Pulido’s father, a musician himself, substitute-taught his sixth-grade orchestra class. Maria Dominguez, who runs a wellness club in McAllen, said Pulido is “a good person” because she knows his family: “His family are working people, good people and raised in the valley.”
Villarreal brushed off Pulido’s relationship with Caballero. “It wasn’t Bobby,” he said. “I guess it’s important for some people, but for me, I mean, it’s somebody else.”
“It’s guilt by association,” said Patricia Villarreal, his wife.
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