In March, when Donald Trump took fresh steps to align his administration with Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia, officials in Germany were not pleased. When the American president announced damaging international trade tariffs, officials in Germany again made their displeasure known.
For the third time in as many months, Berlin suddenly finds itself in another diplomatic dustup with the White House. Politico reported:
Germany’s new conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said he would urge Trump administration officials to stop meddling in German politics. “I did not interfere in the American election campaign and take sides for one or the other,” Merz told public broadcaster ZDF in a TV interview. “I would like to encourage and exhort the American government to leave German domestic politics to Germany and to largely stay out of these partisan considerations.”
Some background is probably in order.
Germany already has a major center-right political party called the Christian Democratic Union, which, on an ideological spectrum, is roughly in line with Britain’s Conservative Party. Germany also, however, has something called the Alternative for Germany party (in German, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD), which is much further to the right than Europe’s mainstream conservative parties.
AfD is so far out there that last year, France’s far-right National Rally party decided to stop working alongside the AfD because it was too extreme.
NBC News reported late last year that the party is monitored by the country’s domestic intelligence agency for suspected extremism; a party leader has twice been found guilty of purposefully employing Nazi rhetoric; a party candidate was forced to withdraw last year after he said that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals.”
It was against this backdrop that Elon Musk declared in December, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
As it happens, the American president’s top campaign donor was not the only member of Team Trump to comment on the right-wing party. After Germany’s domestic intelligence agency designated AfD as right-wing extremists, Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the move, calling it “tyranny in disguise.” JD Vance added his voice soon after. “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany,” the American vice president wrote online. “Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it. The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt — not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.” I’ll leave it to the White House to explain why Rubio and Vance were so quick to rally behind one of the most right-wing political parties on the planet. Similarly, I’ll put aside the obvious question of whether Rubio and Vance would be equally eager to intervene if a foreign intelligence agency were to apply a comparable label to a radical left-wing political party. But for those wondering what prompted Merz to encourage Trump administration officials to “leave German domestic politics to Germany” and to “largely stay out of these partisan considerations,” this is why.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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