Invitation to Nowhere - How Trump's MAGA Movement Gives the AfD an Illusion of Importance

Washington - It sounds like big politics but is really just a symbolic gesture: Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a loyal voice of the MAGA movement, has announced that she will host a "Conference of Patriotic Forces" in Washington in December. She wrote that she had invited politicians from Europe who "put their country and their people first." Among the addressees: the German AfD leadership. Yawn...

What sounds like an international alliance is, in truth, little more than a digital mirage. The "invitation" exists so far only as a public social media post - no official letter, no diplomatic note, no formal request. AfD circles in Berlin confirmed that the party has not received any official invitation - not through Republican Party structures nor via the U.S. State Department. Alice Weidel's response was a polite "Thank you for the kind invitation" on X. In Washington, the announcement is viewed as a private initiative by a single lawmaker, not as an official project of the U.S. government or the Republican Party leadership. Even within Trump's circle, Luna's move is seen as an attempt to present herself internationally as a bridge figure for the right wing - a gesture that mainly serves her own image.

Luna, 36, a congresswoman from Florida with German roots, belongs to the loudest wing of the Republican Party. She stands for pathos, loyalty, and the attempt to carry Trump’s worldview across the Atlantic. But behind the rhetoric lies little substance. Hopefully Alice Weidel will spare us such images - it is already hard enough as it is.

America is in the 30th day of a government shutdown. Millions of people have no idea how they will pay for food in November, and federal SNAP assistance is on the verge of collapse. And now, of all times, Trump’s circle seeks symbolic proximity to Europe. The goal is not exchange but self-assurance - the illusion that Trumpism is a global project rather than an American symptom. For that, the AfD is perfect - not as a partner but as a prop.

The party can imagine itself for a moment standing alongside the "patriots," but in reality, it plays only a minor role in a political play that is being written elsewhere. While Weidel muses on X about "freedom of speech" and Tino Chrupalla waits for invitations, millions of Americans are struggling to survive. The country is economically weakened, its social systems collapsing, and in 2026 many Americans will pay three times as much for health insurance as in 2025 - a price for Trump’s power games that falls on the poorest. Trump’s America is no model - it is a warning. And anyone aligning with that movement confuses proximity with dependence. The MAGA movement does not need the AfD - it uses it as a symbol to demonstrate its international reach. For the AfD, this is not an invitation but a reflection of its own insignificance.

Luna declared that she was "deeply concerned" because Germany supposedly "prevents its citizens from showing national pride." A sentence that sounds as if copied directly from one of Trump’s speeches - emotional, factually empty, but politically calculated. The AfD eagerly seizes such words because it sees in them a kind of American blessing. But in truth, it is only the offshoot of a system that is failing in its own country. So if a few AfD representatives do indeed show up in Washington in December, it will not be as allies but as extras in an exhausted theater of power - a meeting of two movements that invest more energy in self-presentation than in the reality they claim to defend. We will be there to watch.

And perhaps that is the bitter truth: the AfD dreams of influence where there is only stage left - and the stage belongs to a country that no longer knows what it is playing for. In Germany, it would be wise not to attach any greater importance to such news. Every bit of attention serves as an invitation to continue. Especially at these planned performances, where political lost causes believe they can make the world worse and still earn applause, only one thing helps: disregard or frog costumes. This is not worth publicity - and certainly not a story that should be made big.