The top election candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, expects to hold a live online conversation with tech billionaire Elon Musk on January 9, Weidel announced on Friday.
Musk, a close adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump and a major political donor, recently created controversy by wading into German politics with a ful-throated endorsement of the AfD in an opinion piece in the Sunday edition of Die Welt newspaper.
Trump has also said that Musk will have an official role in the next US administration.
The conversation between Musk and Weidel will be hosted on Musk’s X platform and is planned for 7 pm (1800 GMT) on January 9, Weidel said in a post on X.
“The main topics will be freedom of expression and the AfD’s ideas for a sustainable Germany,” Weidel’s spokesman, Daniel Tapp, told dpa.
Two days later, Weidel is expected to be officially put forward as the party’s top candidate at a national AfD party conference ahead of parliamentary elections on February 23.
An X user made the suggestion for the meeting with Weidel after Musk’s controversial opinion piece endorsing the AfD.
The billionaire, who owns electric carmaker Tesla and private space firm SpaceX among other firms, later responded to a pro-AfD influencer: “Wait until Alice and I do an X-Spaces conversation. They will lose their minds” – accompanied by two laughing faces with tears.
Weidel’s spokesman said that there has been regular contact between Musk’s team and the AfD for months now, although there has not yet been a personal meeting between Weidel and Musk.
The AfD spokesman, however, rejected a rumour that Weidel might attend Trump’s inauguration in Washington on January 20. He said that Weidel would be busy campaigning ahead of German elections.