AfD
leaders want to keep distance from unpopular Trump before key eastern elections
While the
AfD rank-and-file deepens ties with MAGA, party leaders are quietly pressing
members to dial back overt displays of affinity for Trump.
March 26,
2026 4:00 am CET
By Nette
Nöstlinger and Pauline von Pezold
BERLIN —
Leaders of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) are quietly
distancing themselves from U.S. President Donald Trump as backlash over the
Iran war grows and important elections loom.
While
rank-and-file members of the AfD continue to cultivate contacts with Trump
administration officials and MAGA Republicans — and see it as in their
long-term interest to do so — the party’s leaders are urging lawmakers to tamp
down the overt, public embrace.
That
dynamic is on ample display this week in Berlin. On Wednesday night, AfD
foreign policy lawmakers were set to dine with U.S. State Department official
David Goldman and a member of the political section of the U.S. embassy, Ian
Campbell, according to an invitation seen by POLITICO that was confirmed by two
invitees. The group was to have dined in a parliamentary club across from the
Reichstag building after an event focused on German-U.S. relations amid a
“changing world order.”
But two
days before the dinner, AfD leader Alice Weidel told senior party lawmakers to
reduce the number of high-profile trips party politicians are making to the
U.S. to cultivate ties with MAGA Republicans, according to four people who were
present at the meeting. The calculation is that its growing alignment with the
U.S. administration is increasingly turning into a liability for the AfD.
“There
have been a big many trips to the U.S. in quick succession, and there is a
perception within the parliamentary group, the foreign policy working group,
and certainly among the leadership that our goal has always been to maintain
balanced and good relations with all international players,” said Torben Braga,
an AfD lawmaker from the eastern state of Thuringia. “In that we include —
unlike other parties — Russia, but also, for example, China and India and
countries in the Global South.”
Surveys
show that most Germans are against this month’s strikes on Iran, and attitudes
toward the U.S. are nearing record negatives, with only 15 percent of Germans
saying they view the U.S. as a trustworthy partner in one recent poll. This
helps explain why the AfD’s leaders last month condemned the war with Iran,
warning that “renewed destabilization of the Middle East” is “not in Germany’s
interest.”
The
effort to create some distance with Trump isn’t entirely new. AfD leaders
loosened their embrace of the Trump administration earlier this year as public
sentiment in Germany turned against the U.S. president over his talk of taking
control of Greenland and his decision to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás
Maduro.
But the
latest effort of AfD leaders to distance themselves from Trump reflects the new
political realities in the far-right strongholds of the former East Germany
ahead of two state elections in the region in September. In these areas,
skepticism of American military interventions is more pervasive, as is sympathy
with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The AfD
is leading comfortably in polls ahead of both state elections, and its leaders
aim to harness that momentum to gain power for the first time since the party’s
founding in 2013 in at least one of the two races.
“Right
now, everything else is taking a back seat to the elections in the East,” said
Gerald Otten, a foreign policy lawmaker of the AfD who only last week visited
Washington as part of NATO’s parliamentary assembly.
Against
the U.S. ’empire’
This
doesn’t mean the AfD is abandoning its attempts to network with ideological
allies in the U.S., at least behind the scenes.
“Together
with guest speakers from the United States, we will analyze the opportunities,
risks, and strategic options for cooperation based on shared cultural values
and economic interdependence,” read an invitation to the event with U.S.
officials and AfD lawmakers on Wednesday night in Berlin.
Christopher
Butler, executive director of Americans for Tax Reform and Stefano Forte,
president of the New York Young Republicans Club, were listed as speakers.
Goldman,
who works in the office of policy planning in the U.S. State Department, did
not immediately respond to a request for comment about his planned attendance
at the event and planned dinner with AfD officials afterwards. The U.S. embassy
in Berlin also did not respond to requests for comment on Campbell’s scheduled
attendance by the time of publication.
The
reason AfD leaders want to maintain contact with MAGA Republicans is clear:
They still look to the Trump administration for support to end their political
ostracization at home. The party is pushing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s
conservatives to knock down the “firewall” that has kept mainstream parties in
Germany from governing with the far right since the end of World War II.
Early in
Trump’s second term, the AfD eagerly embraced endorsements from Elon Musk, the
tech entrepreneur and Trump supporter, and celebrated Vice President JD Vance’s
attack on European firewalls against the far right at last year’s Munich
Security Conference.
But that
position had not been the default for the AfD, which is traditionally more
sympathetic to Moscow. In fact, many AfD politicians have previously expressed
resentment over American military interventions around the world and what they
view as the U.S. postwar domination of Germany. In an interview last year with
the American Conservative bimonthly magazine, AfD leader Weidel suggested
Germany is a “slave” to the U.S. and said the country would not fight in
foreign wars for an American “empire.”
“Don’t
expect the unfree to take over this fight for you,” Weidel said at the time.
“There will be no such thing.”
Against
that backdrop, the party’s cooling posture toward the U.S. — at least outwardly
— marks a shift back toward the old normal.
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