On Wednesday, I went to Krasinski Square, in Warsaw, to witness its transformation into a stage fit for an American President. Donald Trump, who would be in Europe for the G-20 summit, had decided to deliver a speech from the square on Thursday, and construction workers were busy erecting seats for the V.I.P. audience members. Police officers at the site seemed relaxed: venturing too close to the cordoned-off area elicited nothing more than a brisk wave. A British man guiding a group of men wearing yarmulkes gestured at the square’s monument to the Warsaw Uprising. “The symbolism of this place is why Trump is speaking here tomorrow,” he told them.

The 1944 rebellion, in which members of the Polish underground battled Nazi forces for sixty-three days while the Soviet Army waited on the far side of the Vistula River, was an unmitigated tragedy. Some two hundred thousand people died, and the Nazis destroyed ninety per cent of the city. The elegant buildings that tourists see today in Warsaw’s Old Town are largely replicas based in part on eighteenth-century paintings of the city.

Poland’s ruling right-wing Law and Justice Party had welcomed Trump’s Warsaw visit. The Party, which has had a majority in parliament since 2015, has clashed with the German- and French-dominated European Union on a number of issues—immigration, most notably—and views Trump as a natural ally. Jarosław Kaczyński, the Party’s leader, touted Trump’s visit as a “new success” for Poland, and Polish leaders reportedly promised Trump big, enthusiastic crowds.

The government used a method from the old Communist playbook to insure turnout: they offered free bus rides to Warsaw for Party supporters and Trump fans who live outside the city. All morning, one bus after another stopped on streets near the square and unloaded passengers. Some had spent the night in transit but they seemed cheerful, if rumpled. The most common accessory was a miniature Polish flag, sometimes paired with an American one. In the end, an estimated fifteen thousand people showed up for Trump’s speech. Police allowed several hundred protesters to gather on a side street several blocks away.

The crowd was varied. I spoke with a woman named Dagmara who had travelled to Warsaw from Katowice, an industrial city south of Warsaw. She wore a cowboy hat and had painted an American flag on her right cheek, and hoped that Trump would “show that he respects our bravery and the Warsaw Uprising.” Nearby stood a group of teen-age girls wearing the uniforms of the Polish equivalent of the Girl Scouts. They were from a small town in northeastern Poland, and one of them told me that they were excited to see Trump because they thought he was “a good human.” As I turned away, one of the girls said, in Polish, “Poles for Poland.” I then went up to a man draped in the Confederate flag, who told me that he knew what the flag meant in America but, to him, it represented resistance to a federal government that dominated smaller states, as the European Union did Poland. “As for Trump, I am neutral,” he said, shrugging. “I am here against the E.U. and forced migration,” a reference to the union’s requirement that member states take in a set number of refugees.

When Trump finally took the stage, he got off to a strong start. “America loves Poland,” he declared. The crowd clapped and cheered when he complimented their “beautiful piece of land.” He hailed Copernicus, Chopin, and John Paul II as Polish heroes. (Monuments to all three can be found in the city.) As he got to the heart of his speech, the President’s words resonated with Polish rhetoric of national martyrdom. The crowd seemed genuinely moved by Trump’s emphasis on Poland’s “noble sacrifice.” The biggest cheer came when Trump said, “You never lost your pride.” After he finished, the crowd chanted, “We thank you.”

An elderly white-haired man from Warsaw named Paul teared up as he told me that it was “a perfect speech, very incredible. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Poland will be free now.” Magdalena, a twenty-one-year-old who had come by train from Pomerania, in northern Poland, said that Trump was a “true fighter against globalism.” She considered globalism a “fake ideology” run by people who “promise us equality but make us poorer.” A teen-ager named Julia repeatedly pressed her hand to her heart as she explained to me that she didn’t have the words to say how amazing the speech was. “I loved that he was talking about our world and our Europe,” she finally said. “People in the world never talk about our history and our beautiful country like he does.”

In his speech, Trump publicly endorsed NATO’s Article 5, which calls for the alliance to defend any member that comes under attack, and he called for Russia to “cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere.” He also expressed support for the Polish-led Three Seas initiative, which aims to reduce dependence on Russian energy supplies to Poland and other nations, and serves as a counterweight to E.U. influence in Central Europe. But Trump didn’t announce a specific plan for American energy and infrastructure support—something many Polish leaders were hoping for. There was also no mention of Poland’s much-desired admission to the U.S. visa-waiver program, in which most E.U. countries are included.

There’s no question, however, that Trump’s speech gave a political boost to the ruling party. Toward the end of his speech, Trump said that “the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” He turned the story of the Warsaw Uprising into a dark call to action, saying, “Those heroes remind us that the West was saved with the blood of patriots; that each generation must rise up and play their part in its defense; and that every foot of ground, and every last inch of civilization, is worth defending with your life.”

Afterward, a few of the protesters gathered at a café on a nearby street. A black banner from a protest marking International Women’s Day last March was propped against a chair, next to a “Dumb Trump” sign. The demonstrators said they hadn’t heard the speech from their location, and seemed frustrated. One complained about the distance of the protest. “We screamed and screamed, and we were almost not heard,” he said. He paused. “But we were heard,” he added, as if to console himself.