The Democrats win both chambers of the US Congress. Leading AfD politicians react dividedly to the election results. The focus is on the role of President Trump.
After the US midterm elections, AfD members criticized US President Trump inconsistently; Alice Weidel cites Trump's broken promise of a non-interventionist foreign policy as the reason for the defeat.
Bernd Baumann criticizes Trump's import tariffs and rising energy prices, which increased inflationary pressure and interest rate increases by the US Federal Reserve.
Beatrix von Storch emphasizes that the presidential party's loss of majorities is common in midterms and contradicts the narrative that Trump is endangering democracy.
Berlin. The clear victory of the Democrats in the US midterm elections is causing different reactions within the AfD. While leading party politicians blame US President Donald Trump for the Republican defeat, others defend him. Trump's foreign policy is particularly controversial.
AfD leader Alice Weidel sees the Iran War as a reason for the Republicans' poor performance. It is not unusual for the president's party to lose its majority in the midterms. “However, the extent of the Republicans’ defeat is remarkable and can be explained above all by the devastating consequences of the Iran War,” said Weidel.
Trump promised his voters that he would not pursue “an interventionist foreign policy.” He moved away from that. “This broken promise has now fallen on the Republicans’ feet,” said Weidel. It is in the interests of Germany and Europe that both the war against Iran and the war in Ukraine are ended as quickly as possible.
In the elections, Democrats achieved majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. According to projections, they currently have 54 of the 100 seats in the Senate. The Republicans have 44 seats. No interim results were initially available from Alaska and Mississippi.
According to projections, the Democrats have so far won 228 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The Republicans have 139 seats.
The First Parliamentary Managing Director of the AfD parliamentary group, Bernd Baumann, criticized the US President even more clearly. “As president, he made unnecessary mistakes,” Baumann told Handelsblatt.
Trump's import tariffs in particular have fueled inflation. The “continuing smoldering of the Iran conflict including the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz” has caused energy prices to rise additionally. The US Federal Reserve responded by raising interest rates. “All in all, an environment that personally affected and disappointed many voters,” said Baumann.
The AfD politician is already looking to the time after Trump, who will not be allowed to run for president again after his second term in office. “We hope for a capable Republican successor who will better serve the anti-woken majorities in the USA politically,” said Baumann.
Baumann maintains his fundamental political proximity to Trump. He was elected because the majority of Americans wanted “an end to woke establishment supremacy.” “That’s what connects us to him.”
AfD member of the Bundestag Matthias Moosdorf also takes a hard look at Trump's Iran policy. To this day, the president refuses to admit the attack on Iran as a “failure,” Moosdorf wrote on Platform X. Instead, Trump continues to claim that the attack is “good for America in the long term.”
In fact, Trump “not only has no plan regarding Iran,” but also “no support for further adventures in his own country,” Moosdorf wrote. The consequences of his policies are “disturbed world trade”, a “strengthened global south” and a “destroyed Middle East”. Iran is now “a recognized middle power,” while the mullahs are “more firmly in the saddle.”
AfD parliamentary group leader Beatrix von Storch assesses the election results differently. She demonstratively stood behind Trump and warned against inferring that the loss of the Republican majority would mean a fundamental weakening of the president. “In the USA, it is not the exception, but the rule that the presidential party loses the midterms,” she wrote on X. “It was the same with Obama.”
Different majorities in Congress and the White House are “based on the separation of powers”. For von Storch, the election result also refutes the criticism of Trump's understanding of democracy. It “refutes all the lies” that have claimed that Trump is “an autocrat and the end of democracy.”
The foreign policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, Markus Frohnmaier, also emphasized the similarities with the Republicans. Both parties wanted to “renew the West as a community of sovereign nations, preserve national and cultural identity and push back the left-wing ideological sovereignty of interpretation,” said Frohnmaier.
He described the loss of the majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate to the German Press Agency as a setback for “our political partners”. However, he considers the immediate consequences for Germany to be limited. “As president, Donald Trump remains the essential authority over his country’s foreign policy line.”
The Democrats' good performance was reflected, among other things, in the fact that Democratic candidates were also able to achieve success in traditionally Republican states. Democrat James Talarico won the race for the Senate seat for Texas.
In Kansas, which has been held by Republicans for more than 90 years, Democrat Adam Hamilton won the majority of votes. The first Muslim senator in US history was elected in Michigan, the Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
With a majority in both chambers of Congress, the Democratic Party could now restrict US President Trump's options for action - including by blocking proposed legislation.
Trump himself congratulated the election winner on Fox News and certified that the Democrats had done a good job. However, he did not see his party's performance as a personal defeat. If he had personally been on the ballot, there would have been a clear victory, the US President wrote on his Truth Social platform. He cited the Iran War as one of the possible reasons for his party's poor performance.
