BERLIN (Reuters) - The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which initially embraced Donald Trump and the populism that swept him into office last year, had a message for the U.S. president on Monday - he should tweet less, and govern more. Alice Weidel, one of the AfD s top two candidates in the Sept. 24 election in Germany, said Trump s response to a recent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, had been   completely unnecessary  and she had only a  limited understanding  for it.  Donald Trump should focus more on policies and less on tweeting and Twitter,  Weidel told journalists in Berlin.  If I had a wish list, then I would wish that Donald Trump would focus ... more on cleaning up his own house, and being a little more devoted to his governing responsibilities.  Trump was widely criticized for at first failing to condemn white supremacist groups after a man thought to have neo-Nazi sympathies drove a car into a crowd of anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, killing a woman and injuring over a dozen other people. Trump had said  both sides  were to blame for the violence and there were  very fine people  at the rally.  Weidel s comments came amid controversy over remarks made by a senior member of her own party, Alexander Gauland - the AfD s other top candidate - who said Integration Minister Aydan Ozoguz, a Social Democrat (SPD) politician born in Germany to Turkish parents, should be  dumped  in Turkey. Members of the SPD, and Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, rejected Gauland s remarks as racist. Gauland conceded on Monday that his choice of words was  a little too tough  but Weidel said she agreed with his general concern about what he said was Ozoguz s lack of respect for  German culture.  Weidel said that although her party opposed Merkel s 2015 decision which has allowed more than a million migrants into Germany over the past two years, it condemned extremism in any form, whether it came from left-wing, right-wing or Islamic groups. Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party, the AfD shifted its focus after the euro zone debt crisis peaked to campaigning against immigration after Merkel s move to open the borders.  It is expected to enter the German parliament for the first time after the September election, although its support has dropped to 7 to 10 percent from a height of around 15 percent in 2016, according to polls. Weidel, who is openly gay, chafed at a question about whether she was racist, noting that her partner of nearly 10 years, a Swiss filmmaker, also has a Sinhalese background. 
Hard-right German party tells Trump to tweet less