{"text":[[{"start":9.35,"text":"Donald Trump is “a leader of chaos” whose administration is also meddling in European elections, according to the speaker of Poland’s parliament — a rare critic of the US president in an otherwise strongly pro-American country."}],[{"start":25,"text":"Włodzimierz Czarzasty, leader of Nowa Lewica, a leftwing party in Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, told the FT that Trump’s aggressive foreign policy has left few politicians willing to speak out. Czarzasty became speaker of the lower house in November."}],[{"start":44.93,"text":"“Trump is becoming a leader of chaos and I think that in many cases Trump’s behaviour is absolutely irrational,” Czarzasty said. “Individual countries and people are still afraid to discuss this.” "}],[{"start":59.92,"text":"He criticised the Trump administration for interfering in domestic politics, citing US vice-president JD Vance’s visit to Budapest in support of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s re-election bid. Orbán has become a poster boy for illiberalism in Europe and an ideological touchstone for Trump’s Maga movement. "}],[{"start":80.56,"text":"“JD Vance has been full of slogans about freedom and non-interference in the democratic processes of another state, but what he now did [in Budapest] was exactly the opposite,” Czarzasty said, in an apparent reference also to Vance’s allegations that the European Commission was meddling in elections."}],[{"start":102.84,"text":"The speaker cuts a lonely figure in Poland, a country that has firmly anchored its security policy in Washington and kept Nato and the strategic partnership with the US as core priorities irrespective of which party is in power in Warsaw."}],[{"start":118.88,"text":"President Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing politician close to Trump’s Maga movement, revived in September the idea of renaming a US base in Poland “Fort Trump”. "}],[{"start":130.53,"text":"Tusk, whose relations with the White House are more distant, has avoided attacking Trump directly, although he has recently warned that Trump’s threats to weaken or abandon Nato are benefiting Russia and its war against Ukraine. "}],[{"start":145.47,"text":"But Czarzasty is not pulling any punches. In February he drew a sharp response from Washington when he said Trump should not be endorsed for a Nobel Peace Prize while violating international law. The US ambassador to Poland, Tom Rose, broke off relations with him over what he described as “outrageous and unprovoked insults”. "}],[{"start":169.71,"text":"While Tusk defended Czarzasty’s right to voice his opinion and told Rose that “allies should respect, not lecture, each other”, Nawrocki’s spokesperson accused Czarzasty of “demolishing Polish-American relations”. "}],[{"start":185.91,"text":"Czarzasty presented the Iran war as vindication for his earlier opposition to Trump’s Nobel bid. “People cannot understand a person who longs for the Nobel Peace Prize and at the same time initiates wars,” he said. “People cannot understand why new bodies have to be created, like Trump’s Board of Peace, when we have Nato, the UN and the EU.”"}],[{"start":211.95,"text":"Opinion polls show that most Poles remain pro-American, but also now worry about Trump. In late January, Polish pollster CBOS conducted a survey in which 60 per cent of respondents said they were concerned by Trump’s presidency. "}],[{"start":237.73,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1776057391_8069.mp3"}