US President Donald Trump congratulated the Alternative for Germany on its result in the Saxony-Anhalt election. He did not name the party, but nobody was in any doubt about who he meant.

"Wow! The populist party in Germany just had a really big night," he wrote on his platform Truth Social. He went on to say that Germans had finally had enough of "the absolutely horrible immigration rules and regulations that have hurt Germany so badly," and finished with a message that the party is growing and will not put up with it any longer. The signature was MGGA - "Make Germany Great Again", his slogan transplanted onto German soil.

Trump was sharing election projections while the voting was still under way. That is rather more than congratulations sent after the final whistle.

The connection is not new

Since he took office in January 2025, the AfD has had closer channels to Washington than it has ever had. Co-chair Alice Weidel openly points to Trump as an example. Party representatives attended his inauguration. US Vice President JD Vance met Weidel at the Munich Security Conference in February and warned that excluding populist parties is not a solution.

The current administration runs an aggressive deportation policy and a hard line on immigration, and attacks German asylum rules from a distance on a regular basis. The congratulation is part of that same line, just wrapped as a celebration.

Why this is not only a German matter

One thing is a party growing at a regional election. Another is the president of a foreign country publicly cheering for it while the count is under way. For decades Germany was the country that lectured others on how to run dignified politics without outside interference. Now it is getting the same recipe from an ally.

The Balkans recognise the scene without effort. Here every election has foreign supporters, open or discreet, and every party has an embassy it calls a "partner". The only difference is that now it is all written in capital letters and published on a social network owned by the supporter himself.