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Co-leader of the far-right alternative to Germany praised Donald Trump as the “right man” to end the war in Ukraine and asked her country to remain a “neutral intermediary” in a hot four television debate directions before the general election next Sunday.
Germany is entering its last week of the campaign as it accumulates with a stalled economy, a stuffed immigration debate, and a deep heart over the transatlantic relationships of rapid deterioration under the new Trump administration, which has shaken after AFD .
During a two-hour primary show, Afd Alice Weidel’s candidate appeared as the main target of the democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Green Party candidate Robert Habeck and leader of the Democratic Christian Party Friedrich Merz. One by one they faced the far -right politician for topics, including the war in Ukraine and its party’s association with Nazi ideology.
Weidel boasted about the support she received from US Vice President JD Vance, who met her on the margins of the Munich Security Conference on the weekend. The 46-year-old politician welcomed Vance’s speech to the Conference participants, asking Europe’s leading politicians to engage with far-right parties against the establishment.
“Vance has confessed that you cannot build the Firewalls to exclude millions of voters from the beginning. He made it clear that we have to talk to each other,” Weidel said.
Weidel, whose party is expected to win a 20 percent record on February 23, has captured US support since Trump’s return to the White House.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a close adviser to Trump, has repeatedly used his social media company X to promote AFD, a party suspected of right -wing extremism from German intelligence agency. Weidel was also received in Budapest by Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, who described him as “the future”.
The latest show of support from Vance, which kidnapped Scholz in Munich, has caused anger among the created parties of Germany, which everyone has refused to enter a coalition with AFD. This anger was often poured into the open during the Sunday debate.
Merz, whose CDU party is expected to win about 30 percent of the vote, Weidel accused of holding extremists in its party such as Björn Höcke, who last fall won regional elections in the eastern state of Thukingia, and “who everyone The man and the woman in Germany can call a Nazi with impunity. ”
“We have a good tradition in Germany, which consists of learning learning from the experiences of national socialism,” Scholz also told Weidel. “There is no cooperation with the far right.”
“I see this scandalous comparison,” replied the far -right candidate. “Look, you can insult me here tonight the way you like it. You are insulting millions of voters. “
Vance’s address at the Munich Security Conference and the Trump’s movement to negotiate a peace solution with Vladimir Putin without consulting Kyiv and its European allies previously approached.
Candidates clashed on how to finance billions in additional protection expenses, as well as barbed questions of sending troops to Ukraine as part of security guarantees after resolution-a topic to be discussed at a meeting organized by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday Monday.
“What happened in recent weeks and with the Munich security conference cannot be taken quite seriously because the Trump administration is launching a frontal attack on the Western values community,” Habeck said.
Merz criticized Scholz for allowing the French leader to co-ordinate an EU response to Trump’s negotiations with Putin. He also accused the Chancellor, whose SPD party is remaining in third place with 15 percent of the planned votes to hold military aid to Ukraine for political reasons.
But throughout the debate, which covered a wide range of topics, including immigration and the economy, the precursor to becoming the chancellor kept his sharper criticism for Weidel.
Responding to her suggestions that Germany should not take sides in the conflict, he said: “No, we are not neutral, we are not in the middle. We are on the Ukraine side and, along with Ukraine, we are defending the order political we have here. “
