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.”
Leaders of the U.S. Hispanic Business Council knew it would be hard to get Ken Paxton to show up to their Senate town hall event. So, they turned to an unexpected ally: Sen. Ted Cruz.
Javier Palomarez, the council’s president and CEO, needed help since his own background – as both a Democrat and longtime ally of Paxton’s rival in the primary, Sen. John Cornyn – wouldn’t appeal to the Texas attorney general.
Cruz, however, was eager to step in. Soon, Palomarez was discussing logistics for the town hall with Paxton’s team; Paxton joined the event last week.
“We needed to find common ground and people that he trusted, that I trusted … and that clearly was Ted Cruz,” Palomarez said. “I don’t agree with Ted on a litany of shit, but at the end of the day, the guy’s always been a good partner to me and to the small business community.”
Cruz’s involvement hints at the significant behind-the-scenes role he is playing in this year’s high-stakes Texas Senate race — part-time adviser, part-time bundler, full-time believer that Paxton will pull out a win and keep Cruz from representing Texas alongside a Democrat.
Paxton’s inner circle is dotted with longtime Cruz allies, and Cruz’s aid could further cement his position as a Texas kingmaker in retiring GOP Sen. John Cornyn’s absence, earn new allies and boost his national profile ahead of a potential 2028 presidential bid. But if Paxton fails, it could be a black eye for Cruz.
“It is absolutely critical that Texas stay red, that Republicans keep a majority in the U.S. Senate and the House, and that we elect Ken Paxton instead of James Talarico,” Cruz said in an interview. “And so I am all in.”
Paxton’s campaign declined to comment for this story.
For decades, Cornyn has been the gatekeeper to Texas’ GOP donor class. But his loss has put Cruz even more at the center of Texas’ deep-pocketed donor community, letting him flex muscles first developed during his 2016 presidential run as Paxton tries to hold off Talarico and his fundraising machine. Paxton raised $18 million in the last quarter, some of those donations coming from first-time donors introduced to him by Cruz.
“Ted doesn’t go through a meeting in Texas where he’s not telling donors they’ve got to get on board,” said one person close to both Cruz and Paxton, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Cruz has regularly campaigned alongside Paxton and frequently jabs Talarico on his popular podcast. His super PAC has gone on air with anti-Talarico advertising. And in addition to greasing the rails with his big-money donors in the Lone Star State, he’s acting as an informal adviser, regularly speaking withPaxton, according to two people familiar with their conversations.The political orbits of Cruz and Paxton have significant overlap. Axiom Strategies — the GOP firm run by Jeff Roe, who led Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign — has long worked with both men. Nick Maddux, senior adviser to the Paxton campaign, was a key staffer in Cruz’s 2018 and 2024 reelection efforts. Sam Cooper, a longtime Cruz adviser, is now a senior strategist for the pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC.
Cruz stayed neutral during the messy primary between Cornyn and Paxton. He came off the sidelines after the runoff.
“Ted was one of the first ones that understood that, hey, this guy just got hit with $200 million of negative advertising. He’s running against an opponent who’s going to be well-funded,” said Cooper. “He’s going to need some help.”
Within a week of Paxton’s primary runoff victory in May, Cruz emceed a Washington fundraiser for Paxton, urging attendees to come together and support the Republican nominee. Days later, Cruz joined Paxton for a Texas fly-around, stopping in Dallas, Houston and Midland all in one day, to meet with donors. Cruz said they secured $3 million in donations on that day.
Cruz has presented himself as an emissary between more traditional GOP donors and Paxton’s hardline MAGA world.
“The case I’ve been making to donors who previously supported John Cornyn is, at this point, it’s a binary choice, and I think the choice is very clear,” Cruz said, noting he’s had “hundreds of conversations” with donors. “Many, if not most, of the longtime Paxton donors are also supporters of mine, but many, if not most, of the longtime Cornyn donors are supporters of mine, as well. And so I do think I’m able to bridge those two worlds.”
But Cruz’s involvement also carries some risk. Paxton is trailing in most recent polls, and Democrats are increasingly hopeful this is the cycle they finally flip a Texas Senate seat. If Paxton goes down, he could stifle Cruz’s momentum ahead of 2028, when other Republican hopefuls may attempt to lay the blame at Cruz’s feet.
“This is smart on Ted’s part,” said one longtime Texas Republican strategist not affiliated with either man, granted anonymity to speak openly. “It cements him with Paxton supporters as being the guy who stood up for him, and it allows him to expand his reach and have a greater claim on having a unified Texas behind him if he makes a run in 2028.”
If Paxton loses, “he put his best foot forward, and it’s going to be Paxton’s fault that he lost, not Ted Cruz’s,” the person said.
Cruz’s super PAC, Truth and Courage, was one of the first to go up backing Paxton, reserving over $2 million on air with an anti-Talarico ad, according to data from tracking firm AdImpact — though that spend has since been swamped by major buys from the Senate Leadership Fund’s PAC and other pro-Republican groups.
Cruz has hosted or participated in several fundraisers for Paxton, both in person and on Zoom. One of them — a fundraiser hosted by Cruz’s PAC on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention, a confab Paxton later said “dropped our numbers” — featured dozens of donors crammed into an apartment in a glitzy uptown Dallas high-rise, in such close quarters that some of Paxton’s staffers were relegated to work on the balcony.
“It was incredibly well attended,” recalled Rep. Randy Fine (R-Florida), who spoke at the fundraiser. “You couldn’t move.”
AI safety groups aren’t buying OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s shifting stance on political spending in the midterms.
They’re wary of his concession that campaign cash from industry-aligned groups, like the OpenAI-aligned Leading the Future super PAC, may have inadvertently backfired. Instead, they’re pushing for stronger commitments to downsize the flood of money — and for candidates to reject any support from pro-AI groups.
“I won’t believe that they are actually changing their strategy, or their goals I should say, unless and until they do,” said Democratic New York assemblymember Alex Bores, who emerged as a key voice among AI regulation advocates after Leading the Future and other groups spent $8 million to tank his House campaign. He launched a $30 million effort to unify Democrats on AI policy last month.
Altman’s stark acknowledgement to Blue Light News follows a New York Times report that revealed OpenAI President Greg Brockman backed out of injecting more cash into Leading the Future earlier this summer, calling the super PAC’s efforts a “distraction” from the company’s mission. The pause is notable as Americans grow increasingly anxious about the risks the technology poses, and lawmakers scramble to figure out how to approach the emerging tech.
Still, some critics are not taking Altman’s concession or Brockman’s pullback as a sign of a fundamental change in the industry’s campaign strategy — at least not yet.
“What I read it as is they are no longer — or Greg Brockman in particular is not — going to fund Leading the Future,” said Bores. “Does that mean that the industry is not going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to influence policy and get benefits on their way? No.”
Bores insisted that candidates should think twice before accepting financial support from Leading the Future specifically: “An elected official of either party taking money from Leading the Future should be viewed with incredible suspect.”
Guardrails Alliance political director Charlie Blaettler agreed, saying OpenAI leadership deciding to distance themselves from Leading the Future should be the final straw for Democrats backed by the group.
“If it’s too toxic for Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, why are Democrats still taking their money?” he said.
Leading the Future and rival super PAC network Public First — which advocates for AI regulation and is largely funded by OpenAI competitor Anthropic — together spent over $70 million through super PACs this cycle, according to FEC data.
Other pro-regulation advocates have jumped in with their own political spending, with groups like the Guardrails Alliance — a nonprofit and super PAC that launched in June — raising $5 million and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Bores. Some of Guardrails Alliance’s money came from OpenAI employees pushing back against Leading the Future, which is funded in large part by OpenAI president Brockman, his wife Anna, early OpenAI investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and their venture capital firm a16z. They have contributed a combined $75 million to Leading the Future.
Leading the Future and a16z declined to comment.
Some Democrats who were backed in their primaries by Leading the Future — like Reps. Ritchie Torres and Joe Morelle of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida — declined to say whether they would disavow the Leading the Future cash that boosted them in their races.
“An outside AI PAC spent money in the 4th district during the primary, but they didn’t donate directly to my campaign,” Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), who was backed by a nearly $300,000 investment from Leading the Future, said in a statement to Blue Light News.
She did not address whether she would disavow the group and its spending: “I’ve been working with labor leaders and advocates to put workers first when it comes to AI. We need clear federal guardrails to protect workers, safeguard our planet, prevent utility rate spikes and give consumers a voice.”
Even if candidates decide to further distance themselves from the industry’s spending, some pro-guardrails advocates said the onus still lies with figures like Altman to put a stop to — or significantly decrease — the influx of money altogether.
“[Altman was] basically saying, ‘These are the rules of the game, and I can’t really change them, and it’s not in my job description,’” said Brendan Steinhauser, who leads AI safety group The Alliance for Secure AI Action. “Of course he’s saying that, but they could do a unilateral disarmament or encourage the other labs to stop giving, and maybe it’d be just like pacing the frontier — maybe people could pace political giving.”
Former Democratic Rep. Brad Carson, who co-founded Public First, said he would be open to engaging in talks with Leading the Future about pacing or scaling back the industry’s political spending — but only if so-called AI “accelerationists” are serious about backing off. He called out Andreessen and Horowitz who have emerged as the biggest known spenders in this year’s midterm elections and were early investors in OpenAI.
“As long as these accelerationists have a desire to spend tens and tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, there is probably a need for a Public First,” said Carson, who also leads the nonprofit group Americans for Responsible Innovation. “So even if Brockman drops out, Andreessen and Horowitz can just drop another 50 million if they felt like it, and I wouldn’t want to be disarmed against that.”
Brendan Bordelon contributed to this report.
Former President Barack Obama will campaign in Detroit with Michigan Democrats later this month, giving the party a high-profile boost ahead of the start of the state’s early voting period.
Obama is set to join Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson and other candidates on Oct. 24, the state party announced Monday.
“It is my honor and privilege to announce that President @BarackObama is joining us on the trail in Detroit on Saturday, October 24,” El-Sayed wrote on social media. “Get. Ready.”
The event comes 10 days before Election Day, with Democrats defending an open Senate seat and the governor’s office.
El-Sayed faces Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, faces Republican Rep. John James in the open governor’s race.
Since leaving the White House, Obama has remained one of the party’s most popular figures, both nationally and among the party grassroots. He has campaigned in past cycles, but he’s made few public stops on the trail this year.
He previously campaigned in Texas with Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico and gubernatorial nominee Gina Hinojosa, and appeared in a campaign ad with Iowa Senate nominee Josh Turek.
The former president is also set to headline a Washington-area fundraiser Wednesday for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, his first with the party’s Senate campaign arm this election cycle.
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