For the New Trump Administration, the AfD Represents Germany

By inviting select individuals from around the world to his inauguration yesterday, United States President Donald Trump revealed his international focus. Intriguingly, no one from the current German government received an invitation, but representatives of the opposition parties, the Christian Democrats and the Alternative für Deutschland, did, along with German Ambassador to the United States Andreas Michaelis.

The wrong guests?

• Just prior to the Trump’s inauguration a leaked diplomatic write-up from Michaelis warned that Trump will “largely sap” the U.S. of its democratic principles.
• The AfD, represented in Washington by cochair Tino Chrupalla, seeks closeness with Russia and to revive the Nord Stream 2 project that Trump opposed in his first administration.
• The cdu, represented by foreign affairs spokesman Jürgen Hardt, was long led by Angela Merkel, one of Trump’s biggest international critics.

Trump team endorses AfD: Various members of Trump’s new team have shown a particular closeness to Germany’s far-right AfD. Elon Musk, who heads Trump’s government efficiency program, interviewed AfD chancellor candidate Alice Weidel on his platform X and publicly endorsed the party. On Inauguration Day, other AfD representatives met with Trump confidants, such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Steve Bannon.

This closeness between America’s conservatives and Germany’s far right indicates that the new U.S. administration fails to understand Germany’s desire for independence from the U.S. As Weidel told America Conservative in an interview published January 6:

[W]hen President Donald Trump demands that Germany must take responsibility for its own security in the future, he should also be clear about the full consequences. That we will listen kindly to his concerns about Nord Stream and our energy supply, but that we will make our own decisions and he must accept them, whether he likes them or not.

We see a similar sentiment in Germany’s conservative, more mainstream cdu.

Trump has been saying the same thing for 20 years, namely that Europeans need to do more for defense. This inauguration will speed up processes that we would have to do anyway. In this respect, I also gain something positive from it. The more we do, the more the Americans will respect us as interlocutors. The more united we are as Europeans, the more we play on an equal footing.
—Friedrich Merz, cdu chancellor candidate

Watch independent Europe:

The Europeans are far more disturbed about their safety in relying on United States military power to protect them than Americans realize! … Europeans want their own united military power! They know that a political union of Europe would produce a third major world power, as strong as either the U.S. or the ussr—possibly stronger!
—Herbert W. Armstrong, Good News, August 1978

To learn more, read “After Trump’s Victory, Watch Germany.”