Documentation: How WELT turns a fringe show of the AfD into a world political narrative

WELT and Politico journalist Pauline von Pezold are currently drawing a picture that sounds like major geopolitical movement: Markus Frohnmaier travels to the United States, accompanied by AfD members of parliament, supposedly for appointments at the State Department, talks with Republican members of Congress, and a gala where he is said to appear as a guest of honor. This portrayal suggests a moment of alignment with the Trump camp, a moment in which the AfD moves internationally on equal footing. But as soon as you check, or know the scenes in America, what of this has substance, most of the staging collapses. What remains is an event that appears larger because none of the actors involved has an interest in revealing its actual significance.

We also recommend our article: „Die erfundene Nähe – Wie die AfD mit einem „Trump-Berater“ wirbt, den es so gar nicht gibt“ – under the link: https://kaizen-blog.org/en/die-erfundene-naehe-wie-die-afd-mit-einem-trump-berater-wirbt-den-es-so-gar-nicht-gibt/

Politico and WELT claim that Frohnmaier's trip falls into a phase of closer relations between the AfD and Trump's circle. That sounds like a strategic encounter with real foreign policy relevance. The reality is far less spectacular: The AfD is not traveling to the power center of the Republicans, but moving at its outermost fringe, meeting people whom almost no one outside New York knows. The timing of the trip may sell politically well because the new National Security Strategy of the White House was released a few days earlier, but that alone does not create closeness. The strategy contains sharp words about Europe and the supposed "civilizational eradication" through migration, but deriving a direct alignment with the AfD from it is a journalistic overstretch. The AfD gratefully picks it up because the rhetoric of the paper matches its own patterns of speech. But shared vocabulary does not replace a political partnership.

Weidel and Chrupalla have been creating an image of growing closeness to the United States for months, yet they are still waiting for an invitation from Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, or Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The WELT article conceals this void. Instead, Frohnmaier's trip is staged as a significant signal, a substitute for the invitation that never comes despite all efforts. Small meetings become big gestures, fringe contacts become supposed connections to the center of power. The pattern is familiar: When reality is thin, self narration helps.

The supposed highlight is the claim that Frohnmaier receives the "Allen W. Dulles Award" in New York, after which the AfD jubilantly speaks of international recognition. WELT quotes the invitation extensively and thereby adopts the staging of the organizer without verification. The clarification is simple:

This award does not exist in that form

Einen staatlichen oder offiziellen Preis mit dem Namen „Allen W. Dulles Award“ gibt es nicht.
There is no state or official award bearing the name “Allen W. Dulles Award.” The distinction has no connection whatsoever to official honors of the United States or to awards within the U.S. national security apparatus, which are traditionally granted exclusively to U.S. citizens. The “award” mentioned in the invitation originates from a small private organization that uses the name Allen W. Dulles to suggest legitimacy. While it has its own politically shaped and questionable tradition, it carries no institutional significance and functions instead as a public relations instrument aimed at symbolically elevating figures such as Frohnmaier.

This brings us to the point that WELT and Politico completely obscure:

Who actually hosts this gala?

WELT writes "Young Republicans" and the average reader thinks of the official youth organization of the Republican Party. That is exactly wrong. The gala belongs exclusively to the

New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC)..

And the NYYRC is not an official branch of the Republican Party, not a youth organization, not a political arm, but a

a private, right-wing club without any party mandate, whose connection to the Republican sphere is exclusively ideological,,

trading on big names without playing any role in the political decision-making process. It wields no influence in Washington. It is a stage for people who want to appear larger than they actually are.”

The claim that this is a “group” of young U.S. Republicans with direct political reach does not withstand scrutiny. The New York Young Republican Club is not a group in any organizational or institutional sense, but a private, independent club with no party mandate, no formal integration into the Republican Party, and no role in political decision-making. Using the term “group” suggests structure, representativeness, and authority that simply do not exist. Membership in this club confers neither affiliation with a broader organization nor access to the centers of power in U.S. politics. In this way, a local club is inflated into political significance that is not supported by the facts.

that throws around big names without playing any role in the political process itself. It is not a member of the Young Republican National Federation, not organizationally integrated, and does not represent any official position of the Republicans. It has no influence in Washington. It is a stage for people who want to appear larger than they are.

And yes: The gala belongs solely to this club.
It is not an official Republican event, but an internal fundraising party of an association that embellishes its importance with ticket prices reaching up to 30,000 dollars. That means: The amount exists, but it is an expression of the club's self presentation, not its political relevance.

The WELT article formulates as if Frohnmaier were being honored here by American Republicans. The reality: A private club awards a self invented prize to an AfD member of parliament to stage itself internationally. The AfD uses this stage in turn to pretend in its own milieu that it is part of a global conservative axis. WELT and Politico reinforce this narrative by leaving out the crucial information that the event is not official. Even the supposed appointments at the US State Department are of little significance. Such meetings usually take place with lower level staff, often informally, often without diplomatic consequences. No one in Washington views the AfD as a foreign policy partner, and there is no evidence that the party plays any strategic role in US politics. The fact that Politico and WELT frame such meetings in the same tone as high level bilateral talks contributes to artificial alarmism, but alarm sells well, and the truth does not.

This is where the journalistic error becomes visible: What is marginal is dramatized. Hints are made where facts are missing. Political significance is suggested where only a club with a big name and little impact operates. Readers are misled because crucial information is missing: the lack of official status, the insignificance of the award, the actual size of the club. The effect is fatal, because this exaggeration benefits the AfD, which has been inflating its own significance for years with the help of such images and gaining votes.

What remains is a process that says less about the international networking of the AfD than about the state of political journalism, which too often searches for the headline instead of examining the substance. The AfD does not travel to the center of power but to the side stage of a political small group. It receives no award of significance but an invention that sounds like significance. It meets no decision makers but people who themselves have little influence. Everything else is staging, and it only works as long as no one exposes it. But it goes even further in the cabinet of journalistic distortions. In our own interest

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

It sounds like big politics, but is rather 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. Invited, she wrote, are politicians from Europe who "put their country first". Among the addressees: the German AfD leadership. Yawn ...

What sounds like an international alignment is in truth nothing more than a digital mirage.

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.

The party may briefly imagine itself at the side of the "patriots", but in reality it plays only a minor role in a political play that is being written elsewhere. While Weidel philosophized on X about "freedom of speech" and Tino Chrupalla panted after invitations, millions in the United States are fighting for survival. The country is economically weakened, the social systems are collapsing, and in 2026 many Americans will pay three times as much for their health insurance, a price for Trump's power plays that falls on the poorest. Trump's America is no model but a warning. And those who align with this movement confuse political closeness with dependency. The MAGA movement does not need the AfD, it uses it as a symbol to demonstrate its international reach. For the AfD, this is no 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.

And that, dear readers, is the truth, nothing more and nothing less. Such articles hinder our work, our investigations, the fight against right wing populism and a government that does not deserve the name. Such subterraneously bad investigations harm those who fight right wing populism with research and even reward the right wing populists in their efforts to carry their sick ideology further and further into society and ultimately into the final chain of politics.