Trump lauds far-right German AfD party after election win: ‘THEY ARE ON THE RISE’

When an American president is cheering a German party on Truth Social, you’re already in odd territory. But cheering the AfD after a regional landslide, with a “THEY ARE ON THE RISE” flourish, isn’t just a throwaway post. It’s a decision to plant our flag in someone else’s political fight, in a country with a very particular history and a very jumpy electorate.

Yes, the immigration piece is real. Germany, like much of Europe, has asked ordinary people to absorb big demographic and cultural changes while being told to stop asking questions. Voters are pushing back, and the AfD is capturing that anger. Trump is reading that correctly, and American politicians should stop pretending immigration is some niche obsession cooked up by talk radio. People notice when their towns change fast and their leaders shrug.

But there’s a difference between understanding why a protest vote is happening and acting like we ought to be the hype man for it. America First is not “cheerlead Europe’s populists from the Oval Office.” We can argue for tighter borders here without lending our megaphone to a foreign party that carries baggage, invites predictable headlines, and hands our opponents an easy script: “See, they’re all the same.” If Trump wants to talk about immigration, talk about our border, our cities, our laws, our workers.

The smarter move is to let Germans sort out German politics, and let Americans sort out American politics. If the point is that mass immigration produces backlash, that point doesn’t require a digital victory lap for the AfD. It requires doing the hard, unglamorous work at home: enforcing the border, fixing asylum, and proving that a sovereign country can still be a decent one. Otherwise we’re just exporting vibes and importing headaches.