Donald Trump has praised the AfD’s success in a German state election, linking the hard-Right party’s breakthrough to immigration policies he branded “horrible”.
Writing on Truth Social, the US President said the party was “on the rise” after it secured victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
His comments came as reports suggested Mr Trump made no effort to talk Andy Burnham out of imposing sanctions on settlements in the West Bank.
The PM is said to have called the President before Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced on Tuesday that Britain would block imports of goods from the settlements.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD won 44 per cent of the vote, more than doubling its level of support in the eastern state and overtaking the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the biggest party in Germany’s coalition government.
The outcome left the AfD only three seats short of an outright majority in the former East German state’s legislature, while the CDU was reduced to 17 per cent of the vote.
Reacting to the result, Mr Trump wrote: “Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night. They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly.”
The AfD’s victory triggered concern among EU leaders, with CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz admitting he was “shocked” by the scale of the result.
Allies of French president Emmanuel Macron also called for a coalition to keep the hard-Right out of power.
Mr Merz said Monday he was ‘deeply shocked’ after his centre-Right party suffered a huge loss and admitted reforms were needed in the country.
Donald Trump on Tuesday hailed the election victory of Germany’s hard-Right AfD party in Saxony-Anhalt
The AfD’s Ulrich Siegmund, centre, and the party’s joint national leaders celebrating the result on September 6
Speaking in a press conference a day after the vote, Mr Merz said: ‘This is the heaviest electoral defeat the (CDU party) has suffered in years, in decades.
‘Naturally, this will have to have consequences.’
Meanwhile, the AfD’s victory has sparked panic across the continent, with allies of Mr Macron calling for a ‘coalition’ to keep the hard-Right out of power.
Two allies on Monday urged moderate political factions on the centre, Left and Right to unite behind a single candidate, in order to defeat the hard-Right in next year’s elections to succeed the French president.
Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk also slammed supporters of AfD in his country, writing in a post on X: ‘In Poland, only idiots or traitors could rejoice the AfD triumph in Germany.’
And Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday warned an ‘extremist threat’ was advancing throughout the world.
In France, Clement Beaune, a former Europe minister, and former special adviser Philippe Grangeon, who are both close to the president, said victory for four-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen should not be seen as ‘a foregone conclusion’.
‘The key idea boils down to one sentence: no one will win or govern alone in 2027,’ they said in a joint text published in La Grande Conversation political journal.
There is growing concern in France that the sheer number of candidates stepping forward for the polls will dilute the vote and result in moderate forces being knocked out in the first round.
This would pave the way for a run-off between Ms Le Pen of the National Rally (RN) and hard-Left France Unbowed (LFI) leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, which Ms Le Pen is projected to win.
Instead, the centrist bloc close to Mr Macron, together with the moderate left and right should unite into a coalition before it is too late, they said.
‘We must therefore try to build a coalition before the presidential election, rather than improvising one in the heat of the moment on the evening of the run-off,’ they said.
Mr Beaune, who is now France’s commissioner for strategy and planning, wrote on X: ‘We can see it once more in Germany – the far right is on the threshold of power. We cannot carry on as before.’
Meanwhile, others across the world today celebrated the historic state election victory for the AfD.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk wrote ‘Well done!’ after the party won decisively in the vote, far ahead of mainstream rivals.
The surge is thought to rely heavily on nostalgia for life in former communist East Germany and deep-seated economic frustrations that have lingered since the 1990 reunification.
In an interview following the results, AfD co-founder Alice Weidel said she expected centre-Right Mr Merz to be ‘replaced before Christmas’.
Italian deputy prime minister and leader of hard-Right League party Matteo Salvini hailed the victory, declaring that ‘another Europe is possible’.
But the party has fallen short of the outright majority needed to govern Saxony-Anhalt alone.
The AfD was pursuing an absolute majority in the state legislature to govern alone and overcome the so-called firewall of mainstream parties’ refusal to work with the group.
Now, tricky negotiations on who will run the state lie ahead, with final results showing the AfD falling three seats short of overall control, with 39 lawmakers in an 83-member parliament.
‘We have received a very clear mandate to govern here,’ Ms Weidel told reporters, adding: ‘We ran on a clear platform of representing the interests of our country, not those of Ukraine or any other country.
‘If we receive the mandate to govern at the federal level and assume governmental responsibility, we will cut all unnecessary spending. We will control our borders. We will deport all those required to leave the country and all criminals. We will close the borders.
‘I also expect early federal elections, and I expect the current chancellor to be replaced before Christmas.’
The AfD more than doubled its showing five years ago in the region of 2.1million people west of Berlin.
Meanwhile, the CDU, the party of Germany’s unpopular leader, chancellor Merz, slumped to a disastrous result, winning only 15 seats.
The centre-left Social Democrats got 9.3 per cent, the Greens 8.9 per cent and the Left Party 8.6 per cent, all winning eight seats apiece.
Because the AfD fell just short of an outright majority, it may not end up governing Saxony-Anhalt.
Rival parties have vowed that they would not form a coalition government with the AfD, whose leaders have previously used Nazi slogans and minimised the Holocaust.
German intelligence has designated the party as a ‘suspected’ extremist group.
In its draft government programme, the AfD pledged ‘deportation from minute one!’ if it wins the election in Saxony-Anhalt.
Its stated goal, according to the party’s election programme, is to deport as many immigrants who have no residency permits as possible.
The AfD has also proposed mandatory work for asylum-seekers and intends to cut all state funding for integration programmes, which it refers to as an ‘asylum industry’.
The party wants to exclude children and adolescents who do not have permanent residency in Germany from attending regular schools.
It also has a highly controversial plan for ‘remigration’ which is widely understood to mean mass deportations of migrants, although the AfD says it refers to deporting criminals and those in the country illegally.
The party has been particularly disparaging of the world-famous Bauhaus school of design, which the Nazis shut down in the city of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt after they rose to power in 1933.
The AfD has called the school an ‘aberration of modernism’, prompting some to accuse the party of using similar language to the Nazis.
‘The AfD is attacking the Bauhaus, using the very same words the Nazis used 100 years ago,’ culture minister Wolfram Weimer said in an AP interview before the election.
‘And that is why democrats, whether they lean conservative or left, are fighting back against it.’
The party is aiming to win at least 40 per cent in the next federal election after the historic win in the eastern state.
‘My stated goal is to significantly widen the gap in a very short time and grow to at least 40 per cent for the next federal election,’ said Ms Weidel.
Critics of the group have warned that an AfD-run state, due to the Kremlin-friendly stance of the party, could leak sensitive information to Russia.
For example, since Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine in 2022, Germany has largely halted oil imports but the AfD’s election platform calls for a rapprochement with Moscow and an end to sanctions.
While the call is largely symbolic, due to the fact that Saxony-Anhalt is bound by federal sanctions, an AfD state premier could set a new tone in the Bundesrat, the chamber of parliament that represents the states.
