Europe’s
far right starts to edge away from Trump’s America
Stuart
Dowell
Stuart
Dowell is a political writer at TVP World.
Edited
by: Patrick Lagodka
26.03.2026, 15:55
Germany's
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has quietly told its senior
politicians to stop making high-profile trips to Washington. The party that
once cheered Elon Musk's endorsement and celebrated JD Vance's attack on
European “firewalls” against the far right is now keeping a careful distance
from the movement whose coattails it wants to ride towards respectability.
It is not
alone. This week, France's Marine Le Pen publicly asked whether anyone in the
world actually understands what Donald Trump wants to achieve in Iran. And
later today, Poland's president flies to Dallas, Texas, to attend the
conservative conference his political patron Donald Trump helped create. The
problem is that Trump won't be there.
Something
has shifted in the transatlantic conservative project: association with Trump,
once a source of political momentum for Europe's far right, is becoming a
liability they can no longer afford.
A
strategy, not a movement
For the
past two years, the Trump administration has pursued an explicit strategy of
building a transatlantic political bloc with Europe's far right. The vehicle
has been the CPAC conference circuit, held in Hungary, Poland, and soon Germany
and the UK.
The goal
was written into the November 2025 US National Security Strategy: cultivate
“patriotic European parties,” weaken EU integration and reshape European
politics from the outside in.
A leaked,
fuller version of the document named Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy as
countries to be pulled away from the EU. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl
Bildt said the strategy placed the US “to the right of the extreme right in
Europe.”
CPAC, in
this light, is not a conference network. It is the operational arm of US
government strategy. And that strategy required that MAGA operate as a credible
and dominant movement, but that credibility and dominance is crumbling.
Cracks in
the foundation
The Iran
war has exposed the fractures in American conservatism, but it did not create
them. The trouble began before the first US bomb fell on Tehran.
Before
the war, Democrats were already surging in special elections across the US,
outperforming their 2024 results by 13 percentage points on average, a swing
bigger than the one that swept them to a 40-seat gain in the 2018 midterms.
ICE
killings of American citizens in Minnesota had turned Trump's strongest
political issue against him. His approval ratings were underwater on every
issue tested, his economic approval the worst of any 21st-century president.
Then came
Iran. Gas prices rose nearly a dollar a gallon. A Democrat flipped the Florida
congressional seat covering Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, a district the previous
Republican had won by 19 points. “If Democrats can win in Trump's own
backyard,” said Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, “we can win
anywhere.”
Trump's
war in Iran punctured a fundamental promise to his supporters. “America First”
was explicitly sold as the opposite of foreign military entanglement. CPAC's
own organizers admitted the conference was “openly divided” over the war.
Tellingly,
Trump, for the first time in a decade, chose not to attend, heading instead to
a Saudi investment conference in Miami.
European
parties watching from across the Atlantic have drawn their own conclusions.
The
allies start pulling back
The AfD's
party leader Alice Weidel, has instructed senior politicians to reduce
high-profile Washington visits. The public justification is that the party has
always sought “balanced relations with all international players,” including
Russia and China, member Torben Braga explained.
The real
calculation is that only 15% of Germans now regard the US as a trustworthy
partner. Two state elections in the former East Germany come in September, in
regions where skepticism of American military intervention runs deep. The AfD
cannot afford to look like Washington's satellite in a country where
anti-American sentiment is approaching record highs.
Marine Le
Pen, from France's far‑right National Rally, went public
this week, calling Trump's war aims “erratic.” “Does
anyone understand what the final objective of this war is?” she asked. “What is Donald Trump trying to
achieve? I think in reality nobody knows.”
The
thinking is the same in both cases. These parties rose partly by associating
themselves with a triumphant MAGA movement, but that association now runs in
the opposite direction. The proximity to Trump that conferred momentum in 2025
is becoming an electoral liability in 2026.
Poland:
where the contradictions converge
Nowhere
are those contradictions sharper than in Poland and no figure embodies them
more completely than President Karol Nawrocki.
Trump
made a big investment in Nawrocki, receiving him in the Oval Office during last
year's campaign. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem flew to the first-ever
CPAC Poland days before the presidential election and told voters that electing
Nawrocki meant a continued US military presence on Polish soil. He won by the
narrowest margin in Polish presidential history, with his majority built on
far-right second-round transfers.
The quid
pro quo was that Nawrocki would be Warsaw's Trump loyalist and Washington would
treat him as its man in Poland. That arrangement made political sense when MAGA
was in the ascendant, but the deal is becoming harder to sustain.
Earlier
this week, Nawrocki visited Orbán in Budapest for a closed-door meeting with no
press conference after allegations emerged that Hungary's foreign minister,
Péter Szijjártó, had reported directly to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov on the content of European Council meetings. The Polish government
erupted. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it “a fatal mistake and confirmation
of a dangerous strategy of weakening the European Union and strengthening
Putin.”
Now
Nawrocki flies to Dallas to speak at a MAGA conference his patron has abandoned
for a Saudi investment event.
The
contradiction is that Nawrocki's entire political identity is built on Poland
as the frontline defender of the West against Russia: anti-Moscow,
security-obsessed, shaped by a nation that has twice in living memory been
occupied by its neighbors.
That
identity is what won him votes among the conservatives who gave him his margin.
But the movement he has tied himself to is led by a president whose National
Security Strategy contains no criticism of Russia, who is pursuing strategic
accommodation with Putin and whose Middle Eastern war is destabilizing the
European energy supply that Poland depends on.
Nawrocki
cannot indefinitely be both things: the guardian of Poland's eastern flank, and
the loyal European proxy of a Washington that is drifting toward Moscow.
The
anchor drifts
The CPAC
network continues to expand. Germany and UK editions are announced. The
conferences will be held and the speeches delivered. But a political project
only works if the anchor holds.
The AfD
is telling its MPs to stop visiting Washington. Le Pen is calling Trump's war
aims incoherent. And Trump didn't attend his own movement's flagship
conference. The anchor of the transatlantic bloc is drifting, and the European
parties that tied themselves to it are calculating how much rope to cut.
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