On Election Day last month, as Donald Trump gathered his supporters, family and friends at Mar-a-Lago to wait for the results to trickle in, a small group of far-right Germans received little attention. There wasn’t.
They included a former semi-professional porn actor, a self-proclaimed former cocaine user, a convicted thief, and far-right candidate for the German parliament, Philipp Anders Rau. Lau, along with a compact delegation of young political activists and influencers, accepted the invitation of America’s next president to pose for the cameras and shout “Fight!” fight! fight! “In English and German.
As Europe’s populist anti-immigration forces seek to capitalize on Mr. Maga’s momentum ahead of February’s German general election, members of the Another Party for Germany (AfD) have already begun campaigning for the vote in the United States in the months ahead. It was infiltrating the Trump camp.
AfD leader Alice Weidel was one of the first politicians abroad to welcome Trump’s victory, and party members are building close ties with the incoming administration, with party members expected to attend next month’s inauguration ceremony in Washington. Some members of Congress say they plan to attend.
Rau, an AfD parliamentary candidate from Saxony-Anhalt, posted a snapshot on Instagram of a brief meeting with Trump in Florida on November 5, while voting was still taking place.
“Being the first and so far only AfD member allowed to shake @realdonaldtrump’s hand on Victory Day will be a lasting memory,” he wrote. “We hope that Donald Trump will renew his country, similar to his plans for our country as the AfD.”
Lau stood smiling next to Trump, who was wearing a MAGA hat. They were joined by Leonard Yeager, a “Kitzer der Neuzeit” (new-age heretic) who posts anti-LGBTQ and conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. Right-wing activist Beat Ulrich Zirpel. And Fabrice Ambrosini, a former regional leader of the center-right CDU youth wing, was forced to resign in 2021 after being accused of giving the Hitler salute. The criminal investigation against him was eventually dropped.
Mr. Jaeger and the lesser-known Mr. Zirpel later shared a video of their moment in the spotlight, in which Mr. Trump appeared on the club’s balcony and said, “Hello, everyone. And my German friends.” Where are you?” He beckoned the group to come. The men begin shouting, “Fight!” fight! That’s the rallying cry President Trump shouted after an attempt on his life at a Pennsylvania rally in July.
Someone off-camera asked them to say it in German, which they did, and President Trump shook their hands and said, “Thank you, everyone.”
“I just yelled ‘Kempft, Kempft, Kempft’ (‘fight, fight, fight’) with President Trump at the Mar-a-Lago Club just before election night,” Yeager wrote in a post.
“We Germans too need a conservative revolution based on Christian values. Elon Musk and the German mainstream media will not like this.”
Two months have passed since the February 23rd election, and the nationalist AfD, which is in second place in opinion polls with about 18%, is also responding to President Trump’s criticism of Germany over defense spending, automobile exports, and energy policy. I was undaunted.
But the giddy bewilderment when the young people arrived at Trump’s private club so enthusiastic about Trump, 78, was how they got on his side in the first place. Not surprisingly, the origins of the talks remain murky.
Lau is a polarizing figure even within the anti-immigration and anti-Islam AfD. He belongs to a state branch that internal security officials have identified as right-wing extremists, and the National Party is considered a suspected right-wing extremist.
Rau, 41, has taken legal action against the Magdeburger Volksstimeme newspaper, which published a series of stories about Rau’s past scandals.
At the AfD party conference in August, Lau was accused by a rival of being paid to act as a porn actor, but he denied it: “I have never shot a professional video…I am not a virgin or a porn star.” . However, after Rau sued Volkstimme’s publisher, a Frankfurt court ruled in favor of the journalist, stating that “he took part in the filming of a professional pornographic video clearly intended for publication.” .
According to court records cited by Volksstimme, Lau was convicted of fraud in 2017 for falsifying his final high school report card to gain admission to college. Defense attorneys argued that his cocaine addiction at the time was a symptom-relief situation. And in 2012, he and a female accomplice were found guilty of stealing over 1,500 euros worth of items from a Munich hotel, including 100 towels, 80 bed linens and 21 soap dispensers. In both cases, Lau was declared bankrupt and received suspended sentences.
According to media reports, it was AfD politician Jan Wenzel Schmidt who opened the door for Mr. Rau to Mr. Trump as far back as early 2023. According to news website T-Online, Schmidt is known for maintaining ties to the ethno-nationalist Identitarian movement. Authorities said the suspect was “confirmed to be a right-wing extremist.” The 33-year-old was a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt from 2016 to 2021 and has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021.
Schmidt and Ambrosini reportedly attended a New York Young Republican Club reception in December 2023 where Trump spoke. The former president was also pictured with AfD MPs Maximilian Kula and Matilda Martina Huss. The pair had hosted a secret meeting in Potsdam the month before with AfD politicians and neo-Nazi activists, where they discussed “resettlement” and the deportation of migrants. People born in Germany are the descendants of immigrants.
“I’m confident that Trump will be president again, and I wanted to reach out to the Republican Party early on,” Schmidt recently told the daily Bild. “Other participants are leaving in a hurry and a good connection is already established.”
In April last year, in return, young Republicans from New York were invited by the AfD to Berlin and Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt state. Later, Rau, Schmidt and other AfD officials volunteered with the Trump campaign in Florida. He was photographed participating. Bild newspaper reported that Schmidt said he would attend the inauguration ceremony in January with his entourage, and “as a thank you, I received a few tickets to Trump’s campaign party.”
Mr. Lau and Mr. Ambrosini did not respond to requests for comment. Schmidt said through a spokesman that he was not in Florida on election night and has not had any “official meetings” with young Republicans in 2023. He added that he had no “final travel plans” during the presidential election. Inauguration ceremony.
Regarding his stance on President Trump, Schmidt referred to a motion submitted by the state AfD branch in local congresses after the U.S. presidential election, stating that the president-elect’s promise to end the war in Ukraine “offers hope for economic and security normalization.” It is something that is given.” Relations with Russia.”
The AfD has traditionally been pro-Russian and critical of U.S. influence in Europe, but its stance against arms support in Kiev’s fight against Russian aggression is in line with views expressed by President Trump. The party praises President Trump as a “bringer of peace” with a promising future. Ukraine.
“Peace between Germany and Europe will be determined by the US elections,” Lau wrote in an Instagram caption from Florida on November 5. “Patriots must cooperate internationally.”
