Chancellor Scholz’s TV appearance: “I don’t even know what’s gone”

Four citizens at a square table, a television studio, Pinar Atalay as moderator – and Olaf Scholz: The Chancellor is a guest on “RTL Direkt Spezial” on Tuesday evening.

Atalay asks the Chancellor right after his appearance last weekend, where he was called a “warmonger”, a “liar” and a “bandit”. Scholz addressed the troublemakers as “Dear screamers”. The disrupters would recognize Putin as a warmonger “if you had any sense in your brains”.

Is that a new Scholz, Atalay asks the Chancellor, who is “on fire” and no longer “scholze away”? “I don’t even know what is wegscholzen,” says Scholz in a North German sober manner.

An 81-year-old climate activist from Lower Saxony defends the climate stickers. Regine Springorum accuses the chancellor of his verdict on the climate stickers (“stupid”) being “completely populist and cheap”. The chancellor counters this, defends his judgment and counters the climate activist, who believes the adhesive actions are correct: “I think that’s a political mistake, nice as you are.”

The adhesive actions do not contribute to reversing climate change. There he is again, the plain text chancellor. In the course of the evening he cannot find a good word about the “last generation”.

Scholz also kept it clip and clear when he was asked about the Zoff in the traffic light coalition he led. “I’m everyone’s chancellor, but I don’t take everyone’s word for it,” he told Atalay.

The cutting machine operator and father of four, who fears de-industrialization in Germany and complains about inflation (“Life has become so expensive, you can’t afford anything anymore”), he counters with the state’s investments and aid programs. “I’ve campaigned for decent wages my whole life,” says Scholz. He points to the labor shortage, the record number of employed people.

Dissatisfaction with climate policy and heating law

“It’s all going downhill,” says Brandenburger Chris Rücker, a smelter in the steel industry. Climate policy is like using a crowbar. This brings up the subject of the heating law.

Scholz refers to exceptions, grants, “I think word will get around”. Rücker says: “People are very dissatisfied.” He wants to know how things are going with Germany as a steel location. The Chancellor refers to talks.

I am not one of those who duck away.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Scholz benefits from the fact that the two poles of the climate debate are present in this round. One warns of being “overwhelmed”, the activist isn’t going fast enough. In this way, the chancellor can present himself as the one who brings interests together, balances them and creates consensus.

Scholz brings a new point into the debate, a kind of calming pill with which he wants to take the pace and drama out of the discussion. The heating conversion project is “a program until 2045, not for the next two years”

Topic refugees: “We can’t make it anymore”

Nicole Rathgeber, 39, District Administrator of the Werra-Meißner district (Hesse) from the Free Voters, complains that the volunteers are reaching their limits with the strong influx of migrants. The refugee summit has been adjourned. Scholz points out that the federal government will pay 15 billion euros. This sets the topic of refugees. A good million Ukrainians live in Germany, and the number of asylum seekers is increasing rapidly. “We can’t do it anymore,” she says.

“We have to be extremely careful with our democracy,” says Rathgeber when the strength of the AfD comes up.

Scholz said he was “worried” when asked if he was afraid of the 18 percent support for the AfD, which is on par with the SPD. Germany is a “stable democracy,” says the Chancellor.

“It’s a lot at once,” he says, referring to war and crises. “We feel left alone,” counters District Administrator Scholz, who, as expected, contradicts this. “I’m not one of those who duck away,” says Scholz.

I’m the boss, but the country is a democracy.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz

But Scholz leaves other questions unanswered. He responded to the complaint that regular 40-hour weekly work for a family of six sometimes only brings in 200 or 300 euros more than the citizen’s income.

As has been the case several times in recent months, Scholz criticizes the media, often there is only “gossip instead of the reproduction of content”, he complains. He once accused journalists of “pot hitting”.

So public criticism does not roll off the chancellor. Otherwise he refers to his citizens’ talks, in which everyone gets answers, “and I don’t choose the participants”.

At the end, now it’s less than an hour to midnight, it’s about the Ukraine war. It was only on Monday that Scholz – in jeans and a sweater – paid a visit to the frigate “Mecklenburg-Vorpommern” on the Baltic Sea coast, where he visited the US-led “Baltops” maneuver and the German Navy.

Scholz characterizes the attack on the dam as “an aggression on the part of the Russian side”, a new dimension of the Russian war against Ukraine. “Germany is the second largest supporter of Ukraine after the United States,” he says.

The military support is now helping. He remains “cautious” and the war must not escalate into a war between Russia and NATO, says the Chancellor. He hadn’t spoken to Putin for a long time, “I’ve made up my mind to do that again”.

“He should be more of a boss,” says one of the citizens in the final round, and that’s what you can expect from the chancellor. “I’m the boss,” Scholz defends himself, “but the country is a democracy.”