{"id":415907,"date":"2025-01-10T13:39:17","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T12:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/01\/10\/musk-afd-germania-livestream-x-weidel\/"},"modified":"2025-01-10T14:31:29","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T13:31:29","slug":"musk-insists-only-the-afd-can-save-germany-livestream-on-x-with-weidel-watched-by-just-200000-viewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/01\/10\/musk-insists-only-the-afd-can-save-germany-livestream-on-x-with-weidel-watched-by-just-200000-viewers\/","title":{"rendered":"Musk insists: “Only the AfD can save Germany.” Livestream on X with Weidel watched by just 200,000 viewers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – “Only the AfD can save Germany.” That was the gist of the controversial t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate between Elon Musk and the leader of the German far-right, Alice Weidel<\/strong>, held\u00a0last night (Jan. 9) on the American tycoon’s X account. An appointment followed with concerned attention in Berlin and Brussels: Musk offered the campaigning party his 212 million-follower mouthful<\/strong>. With the risk that – as the platform’s owner\u00a0– Musk could voluntarily amplify the content further by inserting a multiplier into X’s algorithm. However,\u00a0in the end, numbers in hand, the livestream was followed by only about 200 thousand people<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Among them were “two or three” members of the European Commission staff working on implementing\u00a0the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU\u00a0law<\/a>\u00a0on digital services. As spokesman Thomas Regnier explained in the morning, the focus was not on the content itself but\u00a0the “system put in place around the livestream.”<\/strong> For now, in that sense, the alarm seems to be over. However, concerns remain on the content of the conversation and the explicit meddling by a future US government aide in the campaign for the upcoming Feb. 23 German\u00a0elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Elon<\/a>
X owner, Elon Musk (credits: Etienne Laurent \/ Afp)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The dialogue between Musk and Weidel lasted over an hour, touching on several topics: from ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East to energy and education, from excessive bureaucracy in the German state to preventing illegal immigration. It reached unchartered waters, particularly when Weidel called Adolf Hitler an “anti-Semitic communist<\/strong>,” a “socialist spirit” misclassified as a conservative. Instead, the leader of Germany’s ultra-right called the AfD a “libertarian and conservative party, but negatively portrayed by the media as extremist,” even if some of its members and sections have long been under investigation by German authorities.<\/p>\n

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Fake news or inaccuracies\u00a0from both speakers riddled the entire conversation. According to the two, the European Commission is allegedly\u00a0targeting Musk’s social network with “150 people” dedicated to watching the livestream —<\/strong>\u00a0a\u00a0number that Brussels promptly denied, noting that there are 150 staff members engaged on the DSA, but for all 25 platforms the Commission monitors. Weidel\u00a0reiterated conspiracy theories on immigration, climate change denial, and vaccines.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On the need to end the war in Ukraine, Musk assured that “President Trump will resolve that conflict<\/strong> very quickly,” making it clear, however, that “that’s up to Trump” and that he “doesn’t want to speak for him.” Asked by Weidel when he might “be ready to make human expeditions to Mars<\/strong>,” the SpaceX owner said he expects to send unmanned spacecraft to the red planet in about two years and manned ships in about four, with the goal that someday “Martians” will be able to rescue Earthlings “when there is an emergency, just like America saved Europe in World War II.”<\/p>\n

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Musk repeated twice during the livestream that “only the AfD can save Germany,” urging people to vote for Weidel’s party. For the past few weeks, the American billionaire\u00a0openly sided<\/a> with the AfD, going so far as to call the president of the German Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a “tyrant” and publishing an editorial endorsing the AfD in a German newspaper. According to polls,\u00a0the ultra-right formation is already at around 21 percent<\/strong>, behind only the conservatives of the CDU. In the June European elections, it had achieved a surprising result with 16 percent of the vote, bringing as many as 14 MEPs to Brussels and establishing the rightmost group on the political spectrum in the European Parliament, Europe of Sovereign Nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahead of the Feb. 23 elections, the American tycoon hosted the AfD leader in a t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate on his X account, which has over 210 million followers. From Brussels, they say “two or three” staff members analyzed the “system put in place for the livestream”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":415879,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[26580,26088,30148,26091],"class_list":["post-415907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-elon-musk-en","tag-ue-usa-en","tag-x-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415907"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415916,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415907\/revisions\/415916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}