Friedrich Merz cancelled his call with Donald Trump on Wednesday, hours after the American president went online to congratulate the far-right party that had just won a state election in eastern Germany.
Trump hailed a "really big night" for populists, Fox News reported. He was cheering the Alternative für Deutschland, which had taken the vote in Saxony-Anhalt. Germany's domestic intelligence agency has classified the party as extremist.
Merz scrapped the call over that post, the Guardian's Europe live blog reported. Germany's chancellor refused to get on the phone with the president of the United States because of what the president wrote about a German election result.
Fox News carried Trump's line at 7:30 on Wednesday morning, Washington time. By 11 the Guardian had the call cancelled.
Merz leads Germany's mainstream conservatives, not the left. Saxony-Anhalt is one of the eastern states where the AfD runs strongest, and the surge there is now the story the rest of Europe is reading: the New York Times led its morning briefing with two words, "Germany's Right Turn," and the Guardian reported from inside the state under the line, "I fear the price could be high."
Then Merz walked into the Bundestag and said out loud what he believes the AfD wants to do to Germany.
