The AfD leader’s fawning over Elon Musk should sink her party. Instead, it will boost it | Thomas Verreyer
Alice Weidel’s livestreamed chat with the X owner made for excruciating listening – but even talk of Hitler won’t deter her supporters
Imagine a politician fighting a general election being granted the opportunity of a publicly livestreamed chat with one of the most powerful figures in the world, only to be heard wriggling out of it after 70 minutes. “I don’t know what to continue (with),” Alice Weidel said to Elon Musk, in effect shutting down the unique audience the owner of X had gifted the AfD leader on Thursday evening.
Admittedly, the rambling conversation felt longer than 70 minutes. It missed moderation and while Musk and Weidel giggled a lot and agreed on almost every issue, the sense that they were boring each other became increasingly acute as they droned on about space travel and religious belief rather than the alleged decline of western civilisation. Had Adolf Hitler not been mentioned, the highly anticipated live talk would have been shocking only for being so unnewsworthy.
Thomas Vorreyer is a Berlin-based journalist with a focus on East German politics
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