Social Democrat Kühnert: Unusual dual role
Gene Glover / DER SPIEGEL
Kevin Kühnert doesn't like to leave anything to chance. His appearances seem spontaneous, but are usually meticulously planned. On Tuesday lunchtime he steps in front of the Willy Brandt House, in a checked denim shirt, with a new beard - and answers a question about his missing degree.
The criticism of it has accompanied him for a long time, mostly in a scornful tone. In 2017 he became head of Juso. Now Kühnert, 31, wants to give up the office and run for the Bundestag, when the topic boils up again. When the journalists approach him, he reacts with a short presentation on democracy and elites, which ends in the following sentence: "People, whether in the CDU or AfD, who accuse people without a university degree that they are not satisfactory in parliaments, meet primarily not me, but a hundred thousand, probably millions, of people in this society who look at very similar biographies and whose life's work is thus trampled underfoot. "
Kühnert has turned the tables, on Twitter his answer is shared thousands of times, suddenly his critics have to justify themselves. Even SPD members of the Bundestag from the conservative Seeheim district praise him for having solved the problem with confidence. For Kühnert these are moments of happiness at a time when he is once again increasing his power in the party.
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