JD Vance has met with the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, breaking a taboo in German politics as the Trump administration continues to court and promote far-right populist parties across Europe.
At the meeting in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president and AfD leader, Alice Weidel, reportedly discussed the war in Ukraine, German domestic politics and the so-called brandmauer, or “firewall against the right”, that prevents ultra-nationalist parties like AfD from joining ruling coalitions in Germany.
Vance met with Weidel just weeks before a German election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party appears poised to take second place on a wave of growing anti-establishment sentiment.
The meeting was not the first contact between the party and a figure close to Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the billionaire now leading a purge of the US federal government, has repeatedly claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany” and last month hosted Wiedel in a 75-minute live conversation on his social media platform, X.
Vance did not meet with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor who should be among the US’ key partners in negotiations with Russia over the future of the war in Ukraine. “We don’t need to see him, he won’t be chancellor long,” one former US official told Politico of the Vance team’s approach.
Addressing the Munich security conference earlier on Friday, Vance admonished Europe’s leaders for refusing to work with their far-right parties.
“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” said Vance. “You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.”
The move sent shockwaves through German political circles as the Trump administration appeared to be making a large bet on some of the continent’s most toxic parties in opposition to the sitting governments in the UK, Germany and other major allies.
“I expressly reject what US Vice President Vance said at the Munich Security Conference,” said Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, in a post on X. “From the experience of National Socialism, the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus: this is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties.”
German courts have ruled that the AfD can be classified as a suspected threat to democracy, paving the way for the country’s domestic intelligence agency to spy on the opposition party.
In May, the AfD was expelled from a pan-European parliamentary group of populist far-right parties after a string of controversies, including a comment by the senior AfD figure that the Nazi SS had been “not all criminals”.
In a speech likely to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe as they struggle to find a single policy on the war in Ukraine, Vance also accused the European leaders of “hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’”.
“Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to pick a fight with our friends,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, at the Munich event.
Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, said he couldn’t let the speech go without comment.
“If I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes. That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning,” he said.
