What did Donald Trump do today?

He touted a "conservative" win in German elections, while the winners trashed his Putin-style election interference.

Germany held elections yesterday, and the result was a victory for the center-right CDU/CSU alliance. It gained enough seats that it will be able to control a governing coalition of smaller parties and elect Friedrich Merz as the new Chancellor. 

By American standards, the Catholic-influenced CDU/CSU would be a centrist party with a number of liberal or even left-wing positions on specific social issues. The CDU/CSU energy policy is more or less the same as the current government's, and is arguably more progressive than the fabled "Green New Deal" that Trump rails about.

Today, Trump posted this on his boutique social network:

LOOKS LIKE THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY IN GERMANY HAS WON THE VERY BIG AND HIGHLY ANTICIPATED ELECTION. MUCH LIKE THE USA, THE PEOPLE OF GERMANY GOT TIRED OF THE NO COMMON SENSE AGENDA, ESPECIALLY ON ENERGY AND IMMIGRATION, THAT HAS PREVAILED FOR SO MANY YEARS. THIS IS A GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY, AND FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF A GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL — MANY MORE VICTORIES TO FOLLOW!!!

The problem with this statement is that CDU/CSU was not the party that the Trump Administration was supporting. It was the ultra-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which presumptive Chancellor Merz explicitly and preemptively rejected as a coalition partner. AfD has refused to expel open Nazi sympathizers. They also welcomed the campaign efforts of Elon Musk, who encouraged them to "move past guilt" over Germany's Nazi past and—in an echo of that past—to embrace a nationalist "German culture" and reject "multiculturalism."

In fact, even before the election—and thus before Trump's post congratulating the "conservative party" on the victory he felt they shared with him—Merz denounced the Trump administration as being as bad as the Putin regime in terms of its attempts to interfere in the election. Given the tone of Merz's comments, it now seems likely that the main foreign policy goal of the incoming German government will be to distance itself from the United States.

Trump has not responded to Merz's actual comments, and the White House has not as yet explained Trump's post.

Why does this matter?

• Either Trump doesn't know which side of a major ally's election he was interfering in, or he thinks Americans are too stupid to notice.

• Trying to put a thumb on the scale of an ally's elections is not much better than inviting hostile nations to do it for you.