SCRATCH OUT JEWS, INSERT MUSLIMS:

[W]ith its echoes of Samuel Huntington's clash of civilisations, it was a dramatic departure. Earlier American administrations defined "the West" with reference to values such as democracy, liberty and respect for human rights. Mr Trump and many of his advisers, including the speech's authors, Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller, apparently see it as rooted in ethnicity, culture and religion. When George W. Bush visited Poland for his first presidential visit, in 2001, he referred to democracy 13 times. When Barack Obama spoke in Warsaw in 2014, he mentioned democracy nine times. For Mr Trump, once sufficed.

The speech included some of the usual Trumpian improvisations. ("That's trouble. That's tough," Mr Trump said of the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany from the west and the Soviet Union from the east.) But for the most part, it was a disciplined repetition of familiar themes: the"dire threats" of Islamic extremism and immigration, "the steady creep of government bureaucracy", the dark forces conspiring "to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are." Mr Trump invoked the "blood of patriots", and the ties of family and God. The rhetoric sounded strikingly similar to that used by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party that governs Poland, and its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

The spectators, mainly conservative Catholics bused in from around the country and promised a free picnic at the defence ministry afterwards, lapped it up, chanting "Donald Trump! Donald Trump!" One 60-year-old restaurant worker from Warsaw, who joined PiS last year, applauded Mr Trump's appreciation of Polish heroism and Christian values. Islam, he says, "teaches people to kill". Beata Drozdz, who runs a far-right weekly in Piotrkow Trybunalski, a town in central Poland, said she had tears in her eyes during the speech: "It was unforgettable." The crowd hurled insults at opposition politicians, booing when Lech Walesa, the anti-communist hero and a critic of the current government, left the square.

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