Inauguration attracts right-wing leaders from Europe

Mainstream conservative lawmakers and politicians from Europe have come under fire from President-elect Donald J. But the European group is expected to include the leaders of some parties that are on the right wing in their country or have recently started to gain a lot of popularity at home.

Many European politicians who enter Washington share Mr Trump’s anti-immigrant fervor.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni headlined the European audience according to her official agenda. Ms. Meloni, a conservative, was one of the first leaders to visit Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago after his election on Jan. 4.

Ms. Meloni, who is trying to stop the influx of immigrants, is considered one of Europe’s strongest leaders, and her supporters hope that she will develop a special friendship with Mr. Trump in Europe.

The absence of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, one of Mr Trump’s biggest supporters in Europe, will be a notable absence. Despite being widely admired as an ideological beacon by many American conservatives and hailed by Mr Trump as “awesome”, the proudly illiberal Hungarian leader was not invited, Zoltan Kovacs, Hungary’s secretary of international communications, said on his Facebook page.

To be clear: Viktor Orbán will not be attending the event. President Trump’s team – according to tradition – did not invite any foreign leaders or heads of state,” said Mr. Kovas.

This is obviously not true. Mr Trump broke with tradition and invited foreign leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, to attend. (Mr. Xi is sending the country’s vice president.)

Here are some Europeans who plan to make an appearance.

Eric Zemur, accused of inciting racial hatred in France, has announced that he has been invited to attend the inauguration. Mr. Zemur has written bestsellers denouncing the decline of a nation whose Christian roots are being decimated by Muslim immigrants and their descendants.

In the year “The wind of freedom that is blowing in the United States will soon blow in France,” the former television personality, who is running for the French presidential election in 2022, wrote on X, inspired by Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Mr. Zemur won just 7 percent of the vote in the 2022 presidential election, and his party has only one lawmaker at EU level – Mr. Zemur’s partner, Sarah Knafo, plans to attend the inauguration with him.

France’s powerful nationalist, anti-immigrant party, the National Rally, said it would send a delegation, but neither the party’s longtime leader Marine Le Pen nor current president Jordan Bardela will attend.

While Mr Trump’s anti-immigrant message has resonated with France’s far-right nationalist movement, The degenerate approach to politics runs counter to the party’s years of increasingly successful efforts to project a more radical image.

Mr Bardella told CNN last week that he did not understand the racing “fad” to “take your picture during Donald Trump’s inauguration speech”.

The group of Germans who plan to participate in the event is headed by the representative of the main conservative party – Jürgen Hardt, representative of the CDU/CSU, in the upcoming German elections. But a member Option for Germanyor AfD, the units classified as far-right by the German government are also expected to be there.

In the February election, the chancellor candidate will not be Alice Weidel, but AfD representative Tino Krupala, his co-leader. Elon Musk, a billionaire partner of Mr Trump, recently conducted a friendly interview with Ms Weidl on his social networking site X, giving the AfD a platform it has long been denied by German media and politicians. Mr. Musk endorsed Ms. Weidel in the election.

Among the high-profile British guests expected are former prime minister Liz Truss, who resigned over a budget plan that rocked financial markets, and Nigel Farage, who leads the country’s militant, populist, anti-immigrant party. UK reform

Mr Farage is a long-time ally of the president-elect, and supported his campaigns for the White House in 2016 and 2020, as well as last year.

While in Washington, he may have an opportunity to try to repair his relationship with Mr Musk, who has been a supporter of Mr Farage but has recently fired Mr Farage. The row began when Mr Farage refused to back down to Mr Musk’s demand for the far-right activist, who has several criminal convictions, to be released from prison.