On Sunday, September 6, 2026, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt held an election and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland won it, taking 43.8 percent of the vote and 39 of the 83 seats in the state parliament in Magdeburg, three short of a majority. The party had won 20 percent in the same state in 2021. The Christian Democrats, who had governed there, lost 25 seats and finished with 15.
Trump posted the results that Sunday, a graphic of the projections showing the AfD well ahead, without comment. On Tuesday night he wrote a fuller statement on Truth Social: “Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night. They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly. THEY ARE ON THE RISE, and not going to take it anymore! MGGA!!! President DJT.” The sign-off appears to be a play on his own slogan, applied to Germany.
The detail that gives the post its weight was reported by Fox News, not by the administration's critics: every other German party refuses to work with the AfD, and the party's Saxony-Anhalt branch has been classified as an “extremist group” by Germany's domestic intelligence service. A sitting U.S. president publicly celebrated a party that an allied democracy's own security service has designated that way.
This is not the administration's first move toward the AfD. A week before Germany's February 2025 federal election, Vice President JD Vance used a speech at the Munich Security Conference to call on Germany's mainstream parties to abandon the “firewall” that keeps the AfD out of government.
European reaction was immediate. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure called the result a “very, very worrying signal” and said Europe faces “a major challenge in the face of a populist wave” that “we must resist.” European Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad called it “a very grave moment for Europe,” adding that “nationalism and xenophobia will never be the answer” and “we cannot forget our history.”
The AfD's own state co-chair, Ulrich Siegmund, credited the win partly to the unpopularity of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, telling ARD that “a very good campaigner for us in this election campaign was Friedrich Merz.”