Federal election campaign: Blind date on X: Musk meets AfD leader Weidel

In an online conversation with AfD leader Alice Weidel, US billionaire Elon Musk once again heavily promoted the party while painting a gloomy picture of Germany. “Only the AfD can save Germany,” said the Tesla boss and close advisor to the future US President Donald Trump in the talk on his platform X. Otherwise things will get much, much worse in Germany. He called Weidel a very sensible person.

The conversation, which lasted more than an hour and was conducted in English, was the first personal exchange between both of them. It was followed worldwide and was also under special observation by the EU and the Bundestag administration due to allegations of election interference. According to a counter visible there, around 200,000 users followed the conversation in a so-called X-Space – an audio platform integrated into X. However, since it is also possible to connect anonymously, the number is likely to be significantly higher.

Weidel joined the conversation from her Bundestag office in Berlin. The entrepreneur greeted the AfD leader with a “Welcome Alice” and first asked her to describe her party’s positions. Weidel started with a general reckoning with the Merkel government, describing long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) as Germany’s “first green chancellor” and attacking her immigration and energy policies. Although Musk said he was a big fan of solar energy, he agreed with Weidel in her criticism of the shutdown of nuclear power plants.

Crisscross the topics

In the conversation, in which Musk first asked the questions and both agreed and laughed a lot with each other, the topics went back and forth. Weidel criticized excessive taxes in Germany and the bureaucracy. Musk reported on the opening of his Tesla factory in Grünheide near Berlin. At that time he had to deliver “a truck full” of papers to the German authorities.

Both criticized EU regulation on the Internet, Weidel criticized the German education system, Musk stated that Trump would resolve the conflict in Ukraine very quickly. He asked Weidel about her stance in the Middle East conflict and whether she recognized Israel’s right to exist, to which she replied in the affirmative. However, she currently sees no possible solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.

Weidel: Hitler “was a communist”

She described the National Socialist Adolf Hitler as a “communist.” “National Socialists, as the word suggests, were socialists,” Weidel said. “He was a communist and saw himself as a socialist.” Under Hitler, communists, socialists and social democrats were among the political groups that were oppressed and persecuted by the National Socialists.

Mars, universe and searching for God

At the end of the talk, things got spacy: Musk waxed lyrical about one of his favorite topics, traveling to Mars, when Weidel asked him about it – and then barely got a word in edgewise during his long remarks. Finally, she asked Musk if he believed in God. He said he was open to the idea. She was still looking, replied the AfD leader and concluded at the end of the conversation: “It was wonderful.”

Illegal party financing?

Musk has been promoting the AfD for weeks, combining it with insults against top German politicians. This is causing a lot of unrest in the federal election campaign. The Bundestag administration is checking whether there may be illegal party financing. The organization Lobbycontrol raised the question before the conversation with Weidel and pointed out that election advertising by third parties is considered a donation under party law. According to the law, parties are generally not allowed to accept donations from outside the EU over 1,000 euros.

Critics accuse Musk of wanting to use his enormous reach to influence the outcome of the federal election in Germany. His messages on X are read and shared by more than 210 million users worldwide.

Meeting with a turbulent history

The meeting with Weidel had a turbulent history. Shortly before Christmas, Musk put a big gift under the tree for the AfD: “Only the AfD can save Germany,” he wrote on his platform. Weidel thanked him immediately. To the delight of the AfD, Musk went one better on the debate and criticism that had begun about interference in the federal election and reiterated his statement in an article in “Welt am Sonntag” – of all things in a newspaper – a medium that was one of the “old ones” criticized by Musk “He belongs to the media, which he repeatedly accuses of spreading lies.

Merz: Intrusive and presumptuous

The post, which was even speculated to have been written by an AI, fueled the debate even further. Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz (CDU) called Musk’s election call for the AfD “overreaching and presumptuous.” Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) criticized the fact that the entrepreneur – after all, an advisor to the future US President Donald Trump – was “supporting a partly right-wing extremist party that preaches rapprochement with Putin’s Russia and wants to weaken transatlantic relations.”

An incentive for the Tesla boss

The debate only spurred the Tesla boss on even further. When an X user suggested that he should do a live talk with Weidel on I have an X-Spaces conversation. Then they lose their minds” – accompanied by two salmon smileys with tears. Soon after, Weidel’s spokesman reported an exchange about a live conversation with Musk’s team. He became interested in the AfD program a few months ago.

EU is closely following Musk’s activities

The EU has been monitoring Musk’s activities for a long time. Proceedings against his platform Large platforms like X, Tiktok or Google have to adhere to certain rules, otherwise they face high penalties. The EU Commission emphasizes that freedom of expression is also protected for platform owners like Musk, but platforms must ensure that they are not used to manipulate elections or undermine civil discourse.

“Politico” had previously reported that a team of up to 150 commission officials would follow the Musk-Weidel talk. However, it should be less about the content of the conversation and more about whether X’s algorithm distributes the live stream so prominently among X users in Europe that it gives the AfD an electoral advantage.