Elon Musk praised the co-leader of the German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as “very reasonable” on Thursday, urging Germans to vote for the far-right party in what is the latest high-profile sign of the tech billionaire’s involvement in European politics.
“Only AfD can save Germany, end of story, and people really need to get behind AfD, and otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany,” Musk said during an audio livestream alongside party co-leader Alice Weidel on X.
Musk, a close ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, compared the political climate in Germany to that in the United States, saying that people were unhappy and demanded change when voting for Trump in November. Germany holds its own election February 23.
“If you are unhappy with the situation, you must vote for change, and that is why I’m really strongly recommending that people vote for AfD,” Musk said.
He went on to claim the president-elect will solve Russia’s war in Ukraine “very quickly,” prompting Weidel to say she wishes the incoming Trump administration will “end that terrible war” because “Europeans – they cannot.”
“They completely depend on the US, in the sense of – ‘oh the USA need(s) to do the entire job. We don’t need to do anything. We just escalate the entire conflict against Russia.’ It’s very dangerous, what’s going on here, and only you can basically stop it,” Weidel told Musk.
Weidel also said that it was “unbelievable” how Germany treated Trump while he was campaigning for president, saying that it caused her “physical pain” to see him “disparaged.”
In the same conversation, Weidel said that Germany needs to protect both the existence of Israel but also to “take our responsibility as a German nation state to protect Jewish life,” which she said was threatened by “Muslim crime.”
AfD is the “only protector of the Jewish people” in Germany, she claimed.
How did we get here?
Musk has run into hot water among European leaders – particularly in the UK and Germany – for playing politics abroad as the world braces for Trump’s imminent return to the White House.
The US billionaire has been increasingly vocal in his support for Europe’s far-right and seems keen to strengthen ties between such parties and Trump’s camp.
Another example of this is the burgeoning relationship between Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Trump’s cohort, with Meloni hosted in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend and hailed as a “fantastic woman” by the President-elect.
Musk has publicly endorsed the AfD ahead of Germany’s snap election on February 23, in which it is expected to come in second behind the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk wrote on X on December 20 after the German government collapsed that week, prompting Weidel to respond at the time, “Yes! You are perfectly right!”
Musk also called German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier “an anti-democratic tyrant” after he spoke out against foreign interference during his speech on the dissolution of the country’s parliament, and called for Chancellor Olaf Scholz to resign following a deadly car-ramming attack in Magdeburg, describing him as an “incompetent fool” in a post on X.
Germany’s mainstream politicians were not happy with Musk’s public support for the AfD, with the Social Democrats (SPD) co-leader Lars Klingbeil drawing comparisons between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Scholz even stated during his New Year’s address that it was up to German citizens to decide the fate of the country, not “the owners of social media platforms.”
What could come next?
As Musk has already stirred angst in Germany over election meddling, Thursday’s livestream could be perceived as another example of that.
The recent heightened tensions come amid an ongoing probe by the European Commission into Musk’s platform X and possible violations of its Digital Services Act (DSA).
Thierry Breton, the EU’s former internal market chief who oversaw the introduction of the DSA, took to X ahead of Thursday’s livestream to write to Weidel “as a European citizen concerned with the proper use of systemic platforms authorized to operate in the EU under the strict respect of our (EU) law (#DSA), especially to protect our democratic rules against illegal or misbehavior during election times.”
“I believe it’s crucial to remind you… that your counterpart (Musk) should, once again, fully respect all its obligations under our EU law,” he added.
At the same time, the administration of Germany’s lower chamber of parliament said it was examining whether Musk’s live chat could amount to illegal interference in the election campaign, according to Reuters.