Scholz disappeared?

Chancellor sees no mistakes in the ARD interview - and then gets loud

Created: 02/06/2022, 10:40 p.m

By: Florian Naumann

Olaf Scholz on Sunday in the ARD "Report from Berlin" © Screenshot: ARD media library

Does Olaf Scholz have government business under control?

Recently, doubts have been raised.

In the ARD, the chancellor lets criticism roll off - before he gets loud.

Berlin – Olaf Scholz (SPD) travels to talks with US President Joe Biden – and seems to have his back against the wall even before departure.

Shortly before departure, with the government plane in the background, the chancellor gave a TV interview in Germany.

And was unimpressed by the allegations.

According to Scholz, the country and its head of government are well on course.

Despite all the criticism.

However, the strategy of letting it roll off could not be fully sustained.

Scholz in the ARD interview: Chancellor refers to "clear orientation" - despite all doubts

Scholz lost 17 points in Infratest dimap's most recent ARD "Deutschlandtrend" when asked about citizen satisfaction with his work.

At the beginning of January, a clear majority was satisfied with his work, currently it is only 43 percent.

One possible reason is the Corona policy.

There were partly unstructured debates, even within the coalition, both about the general obligation to vaccinate and about possible relaxation of the corona virus.

When asked whether more orientation or different communication is needed, the Chancellor said: "We have clear orientation" - and was thus already in the middle of the foreign policy debates.

Orientation was last called for in view of the SPD disputes about ex-Chancellor Schröder.

But also with a view to US doubts about the reliability of the ally Germany.

Corona course unclear?

Scholz is loud in the ARD conversation – "Yes, I'll ask you that now!"

One aspect of the Chancellor's misery, which is sometimes loudly denounced, is domestic politics: Scholz seemed to have disappeared, according to the complaint from the opposition.

The Chancellor was stoically unimpressed for a long time on Sunday in the ARD program “Report from Berlin”.

The course is clear, Scholz said again.

It is good that not everyone says anything before Corona summits.

A little later, Olaf Scholz - just after a post about his rather inconspicuous rhetoric - got loud again.

"Germany is currently the most successful country in Europe when it comes to dealing with the pandemic," said Scholz, initially criticizing his Corona course.

"What's going wrong then?" moderator Tina Hassel asked.

"Yes, I'll ask you that now!" Scholz replied.

"For example, we didn't follow those who wanted to lock us down over the winter," nor those who advised us to do nothing.

They also “made very far-reaching decisions that meant that we got high numbers of infections much later than others due to the contact restrictions,” Scholz said, over the insistence of moderator Tina Hassel.

"I think it's right not to make excited suggestions that all come to nothing," he said.

“I know politicians in this country who, out of the 200 proposals they made, have pushed through exactly two over the course of their long career.

And nobody can remember them.”

Russia crises: Scholz admits hiccups in the RT dispute - "Learn from the media"

In the same conversation, however, the chancellor also had to admit that, without his knowledge, there was a commotion about the dispute with Russia over the broadcaster RT DE and Vladimir Putin's "retaliatory" broadcast ban on Deutsche Welle.

Scholz admitted that he had learned "from the media" about the irritation caused by DW journalists accompanying his upcoming trip to Moscow: The process was "perhaps a bit of a sign of how excited things are."

The

had reported that the Federal Government's press and information office had initially rejected the German foreign broadcaster after the Russian ban on broadcasting.

"Something is being discussed technically by some people," explained Scholz.

"And before you can ever deal with it yourself or even the responsible people can deal with it, some make a report out of it."

Ukraine crisis: Scholz before a trip to the USA – pressure on the chancellor is growing

However, discrepancies before the US trip could be more important than this small imbalance in the unpleasant media dispute in Russia.

Scholz had long excluded the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from possible sanctions - unlike his Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

But as early as Sunday afternoon German time, the USA unceremoniously announced Nord Stream as the definitive sanctions body in the event of a Russian invasion.

Scholz dodged when asked on ARD.

"All of these measures" were considered individually, nothing was "excluded".

It shouldn't be "everyone doing a dab of something because something has to be announced" - it's about "agreed politics".

At the same time, ex-Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel called for

more extensive deliveries of armaments to Ukraine in the

A step that would probably also be in the interest of the USA.

Scholz dismissed this option in the conversation.

"The federal government has had a clear course for many years, that we will not deliver to crisis areas and that we will not deliver lethal weapons to Ukraine," he said - and led Angela Merkel (CDU) as a key witness in the field.

“My predecessor was like that, and that was right.

And that stays true." (

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