The US president praised Alternative for Germany after its commanding victory in Saxony-Anhalt, highlighting increasingly visible political links between the Trump administration and a party that Germany’s mainstream establishment has long sought to isolate.

Donald Trump has publicly celebrated the Alternative for Germany’s historic election victory in Saxony-Anhalt, adding the voice of the US president to a result that has shaken Germany’s political establishment and raised fresh questions about Washington’s increasingly close relationship with Europe’s nationalist right.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, won about 44% of the vote in the eastern German state on 6 September, more than doubling its result from the previous state election and finishing dramatically ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union. The CDU secured only about 17%, turning what had been expected to be a difficult election into a major political humiliation for Germany’s governing conservatives.

Trump responded enthusiastically.

“Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night,” he wrote on Truth Social, arguing that German voters had grown tired of what he described as the country’s “horrible” immigration policies. He ended another intervention with “MGGA” — an apparent adaptation of his Make America Great Again slogan into “Make Germany Great Again.”

The remarks were more than the customary congratulations offered by a foreign leader after an election. They reflected a broader political relationship that has developed between Trump-aligned figures in Washington and an AfD that remains deeply controversial inside Germany.

A German Election With International Consequences

Regional elections in Germany rarely attract direct intervention from American presidents. Saxony-Anhalt was different.

The AfD’s victory was unprecedented in scale. Preliminary official results put the party at 43.8%, compared with roughly 17.2% for the CDU. The result gave the AfD its strongest performance in any German state election and placed it within reach of leading a state government for the first time.

That possibility carries enormous symbolic weight.

Postwar Germany constructed its political system around strong institutional safeguards against the return of extremist politics. Mainstream parties have consequently maintained what Germans call the Brandmauer — the “firewall” preventing formal cooperation with the AfD.

The Saxony-Anhalt result is now putting that strategy under unprecedented pressure.

The AfD did not win an outright majority, meaning that its ability to govern will depend on the parliamentary arithmetic and on whether another party is ultimately prepared to cooperate with it. But winning nearly half the vote fundamentally changes the political calculation.

For years, German mainstream parties could argue that excluding the AfD prevented a relatively marginal force from acquiring institutional power. That becomes considerably more difficult when the party is the overwhelming choice of voters in an entire state.

Trump Sees Vindication on Immigration

Trump interpreted the result primarily through immigration.

His response suggested that the Saxony-Anhalt election confirmed one of the central political arguments of his own movement: that public frustration over migration can overturn established political parties and reward nationalist challengers.

The AfD has made opposition to immigration one of its defining issues. Its programme includes dramatically tighter asylum policies and what sections of the party describe as “remigration”, a term associated with policies intended to encourage or compel significant numbers of migrants to leave Germany.

Trump has pursued similarly aggressive immigration policies in the United States during his second presidency, making border enforcement and deportations central pillars of his administration.

His celebration of the AfD therefore reflected ideological affinity as much as electoral curiosity.

But immigration was not the only factor behind the German result.

Saxony-Anhalt, part of the former East Germany, has experienced decades of demographic decline, relatively low wages, industrial restructuring and persistent perceptions that eastern Germans remain economically and politically disadvantaged compared with the west.

The AfD successfully converted those frustrations into votes.

Analysis of the result indicates particularly strong support among working-age men, rural communities and voters concerned about economic insecurity and long-term regional decline. The party also mobilised former non-voters and attracted support from people who had previously backed established parties.

That combination — migration anxiety, dissatisfaction with Berlin and economic resentment — produced a result far larger than even many of the AfD’s opponents had expected.

Washington’s Growing Relationship With the AfD

Trump’s reaction also revived scrutiny of the relationship between his political movement and the German party.

Senior figures associated with the Trump administration have repeatedly engaged with AfD politicians in ways that have generated controversy in Berlin.

One of the most important moments came when US Vice-President JD Vance met AfD co-leader Alice Weidel during the Munich Security Conference. Vance also used a major speech in Munich to criticise European political elites for excluding populist movements from mainstream political life, an argument widely interpreted in Germany as criticism of the firewall surrounding the AfD.

The episode caused a diplomatic storm because Washington traditionally maintained close relations with Germany’s established democratic parties while treating the AfD with considerable caution.

Under Trump, that distance has narrowed.

AfD representatives have travelled to the United States, while prominent figures in the broader MAGA movement have openly expressed sympathy for the party. Alice Weidel has herself praised Trump and cultivated contacts with American conservatives.

Former US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, a close Trump ally, has also publicly celebrated the party’s electoral performance.

The message from sections of Trump’s political network has therefore become increasingly clear: the AfD is viewed not merely as a controversial German party, but as part of a wider international populist movement.

A Serious Blow to Friedrich Merz

For Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the result is politically damaging.

His CDU had previously governed Saxony-Anhalt and had comfortably defeated the AfD there in 2021. This time, the conservatives lost more than half their seats while the AfD expanded dramatically.

The result directly undermines one of Merz’s central political promises: that a more conservative CDU could win voters back from the far right.

Instead, the opposite happened.

The AfD increased its representation in the state parliament from 23 seats to 39, while the CDU suffered a severe contraction.

The defeat has intensified pressure inside the governing coalition in Berlin, where disagreements over economic reform, taxation, pensions and social policy were already creating tensions.

Economic dissatisfaction played an important role in Saxony-Anhalt. Voters expressed concerns about living costs, bureaucracy, weak investment and Germany’s broader economic direction. The AfD successfully presented itself as the vehicle for opposition not only to immigration but to the federal political establishment as a whole.

Merz now faces a difficult strategic question.

Moving further right on migration risks legitimising the AfD’s agenda without necessarily persuading its supporters to return to the CDU. Remaining closer to the political centre, however, could allow the AfD to continue portraying itself as the only party prepared to challenge Germany’s existing political consensus.

The AfD’s Radical Wing Remains Central to the Debate

The international celebration surrounding the victory has not diminished concerns about the party’s ideology.

The AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt organisation has been classified as right-wing extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence authorities.

Critics point to radical nationalist rhetoric, hostility towards immigration and controversial statements concerning Germany’s Nazi past.

The party rejects claims that it represents a threat to democracy and argues that Germany’s political establishment uses intelligence agencies and institutional barriers to suppress legitimate opposition.

That dispute has become increasingly important as the AfD’s electoral strength grows.

When a party receives more than four votes in ten in a democratic election, excluding it from government becomes both politically possible and increasingly difficult to explain to its supporters.

The Saxony-Anhalt result therefore represents a potential turning point in Germany’s debate over how democratic institutions should respond to parties considered extremist while still commanding substantial popular support.

A Transatlantic Ideological Divide

Trump’s intervention also exposes an unusual division inside the Western alliance.

For decades, American administrations generally encouraged Germany’s centrist political establishment and viewed the Federal Republic’s postwar democratic order as one of the foundations of European stability.

The Trump administration increasingly approaches European politics differently.

Rather than automatically favouring established governing parties, figures around Trump have openly sympathised with nationalist and populist movements that challenge the European political mainstream.

That includes parties critical of immigration, European integration and support for Ukraine.

The AfD fits comfortably within that political landscape. It has called for improved relations with Moscow, questioned Germany’s military and financial assistance to Ukraine and promoted positions that could significantly alter Germany’s role inside the European Union.

The result is an unusual situation in which Washington and Berlin may remain formal strategic allies while influential members of the US administration openly sympathise with the German government’s strongest domestic opponent.

Russia Is Watching Too

Washington is not the only foreign capital paying close attention.

Figures close to the Kremlin have also welcomed the AfD’s advance, reflecting Moscow’s interest in European parties that oppose sanctions on Russia and military assistance for Ukraine.

The Financial Times noted that both Trump-aligned American figures and representatives connected to Vladimir Putin’s political circle celebrated the Saxony-Anhalt result.

Their motivations are not identical.

Trump’s allies tend to see the AfD through the prism of immigration, nationalism and opposition to liberal European elites. Moscow has a more immediate geopolitical interest in political movements that could weaken Germany’s support for Ukraine and complicate European sanctions policy.

But the convergence is significant.

Germany’s strongest insurgent political force is finding encouragement from influential political actors on both sides of the Atlantic divide.

Germany’s Political Firewall Faces Its Hardest Test

The immediate question is whether the AfD can translate electoral dominance into executive power.

Germany’s other major parties continue to reject formal cooperation with it, meaning that complicated coalition arrangements could still keep the party out of government despite its victory.

But even if that happens, Saxony-Anhalt has demonstrated the limits of political isolation as an electoral strategy.

The AfD is no longer simply a protest party hovering at the margins of German politics. In parts of eastern Germany, it has become the dominant political force.

Its leaders are now openly discussing Saxony-Anhalt as a potential foundation for greater national ambitions ahead of Germany’s next federal election.

That prospect gives Trump’s enthusiastic response greater significance.

His message was not simply congratulations to a victorious foreign party. It amounted to recognition from the most powerful political figure in the United States that the AfD belongs, in his view, to the same international political current that brought him back to the White House.

For Germany, that creates an uncomfortable new reality.

The country’s struggle over the future of its political system is no longer exclusively domestic. It is becoming intertwined with a broader ideological battle stretching across Europe and the United States — one in which the traditional boundaries between allied governments, opposition movements and international political influence are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish.