Kevin Kühnert at the top SPIEGEL talk
Photo: DER SPIEGELStill-Juso boss Kevin Kühnert has defended his support for the SPD candidate for Chancellor from Olaf Scholz. In contrast to the election of the party chairman last year - when Scholz lost and Kühnert supported the victorious Esken / Walter-Borjans duo - "now it's about the Chancellery," said Kühnert in the new top SPIEGEL meeting with Markus Feldenkirchen. "Now it is a question of leading a government. And with it other qualities," said Kühnert.
The Juso boss praised Scholz's external image. The finance minister is now showing a "much more empathic approach to politics", which can be seen, for example, at the most recent press conferences.
Kühnert also made a fundamental statement about the future of the Social Democrats. The prerequisites for politics in Germany and especially in the SPD have changed "tremendously in the last 15 years," said Kühnert. "Today we are lowering VAT. In 2005, we were rightly beaten for it, because we raised it, contrary to previous promises." Until a year ago there was still talk of a black zero, said Kühnert. "That should be a value in itself in politics. Now it is Olaf Scholz who is suspending the debt brake."
Kühnert in conversation with Markus Feldenkirchen
Photo: DER SPIEGELNo pity for Michael Müller
Kühnert, who is now applying for a member of the Bundestag, commented on the allegations of not having completed a degree. Ex-party leader Sigmar Gabriel recently recommended that he go to work for a few years. "What I can just show, however, is that I am able to take care of myself, to be a thinking person," said Kühnert. "I work seven days a week, running a youth association with 80,000 people is not a leisure activity." And Gabriel had to ask himself, "Would he really be more in agreement with my ideas if I had worked on the assembly line at Daimler for another five years? I have my doubts."
Kühnert is running for the Bundestag in the Berlin constituency of Tempelhof-Schöneberg, in the home district of the Governing Mayor Michael Müller, who also wants to join the Bundestag. "Nobody is entitled to any constituency, neither he nor I, nor anyone else," said Kühnert. "We are no longer in the squire's time, where we own lands and we call the servants together to vote, but we are citizens of the same - 350,000 in number in Tempelhof-Schöneberg who live there."
Müller is now running in the constituency of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf against his State Secretary Sawsan Chebli.
Was he sorry for Müller? Kühnert: "I think you don't have to feel sorry for democratic elections."
Icon: The mirroras
