The hair is now wet. While they were still dry at the first interview with “Bild Live” and later at the press conference, they are now stuck flat on the serious head of the candidate for chancellor. It is night in Stolberg near Aachen, in his home town, in the disaster area, blue lights are shining in the background, firefighters are standing in the distance. Drops shine on Armin Laschet’s blue rain jacket. But: It is not completely buttoned up. An ironed white shirt collar peaks out. Because here the Glück-Auf-Prime Minister Laschet is live in Maybrit Illner’s studio, but he is here primarily as a maybe-soon-chancellor who makes the best use of the evening to say: I can crisis.
What hasn’t he done wrong? Reacts too late. Then the macho allegations after the “Young Woman” comment in an interview with “Current Hour” presenter Susanne Wieseler. It’s not entirely clear whether that’s what he meant. It could also be that he in his Öcher-Platt-Singsang “Excuse meyoung Mrs. … “said and the name of the journalist didn’t occur to him straight away.
The question of guilt muddles Laschet and instead makes a sovereign election campaign
And then Laschet is right in the middle of the action. Only: The climate crisis flashes in the background, which does not necessarily illuminate the face of the CDU in an advantageous manner.
Illner’s editorial team dropped the originally planned topic “Economy and Foreign Policy” and instead called a six-person crisis team together to answer the question “Rain flood and heat records – defenseless in the climate crisis?” So much flexibility is by no means a given. The evening before, the WDR reacted to the more than 1000 missing persons, the rising death rate, flooded streets in its own broadcast area, as agile as a blue whale in a river in the Eifel. A spontaneous program change? Turning impossible. We stick to the planned course, somehow squeeze through and prefer to send the “summer highlights from the Münsterland” from the dry shore.
Before Armin Laschet and the pessimistic group turn to the question of guilt, he fortunately remembers the victims, the relatives and the helpers apart from the political question. He tells of a firefighter who died on the job, of an apartment he was flushed to empty. This sets the tone for the show.
The question of guilt (Could such a catastrophe have been prevented with better policies?) Is confused by Laschet and instead campaigns with sovereignty. “We now have to find ways to get everything going again very quickly here.” He boasts about phasing out coal (“That takes so much CO₂ out of the air”), advocates green hydrogen, for a climate-neutral industry, predicts rail projects. And stresses: “We have to remain an industrialized country.” Illner leaves a lot of it indulgent, says goodbye to him with a “good luck” and that one does not want to delay him any longer in such a situation. “Thank you very much for understanding, but”, he clumps his fists, “you have to be here at a moment like this.”
The frustration then discharges. The subjunctive II doesn’t sound good in front of the pictures from Bad Münstereifel. He plays the song of the missed opportunity: “You could have earlier”, “You should have”. Sentences like “nobody wanted to hear that back then” are used.
Karl Lauterbach does not seem to miss any crisis, lists the sins of the past and preaches a dark future: “That will be with us for the next 80 years.” The doctor, moderator and supporter of the “Scientists for Future” Eckart von Hirschhausen do not care about the rules of dignified talk show gossip when he says: “The prioritization of the economy is so pissed off” or “Our brains are with me 42 degrees in the ass. “
“I know you have a hard time in your party”
Finally, the eye falls on Andreas Jung, who remained very quiet in the first part of the program. The Union’s climate expert has the role of the one who stayed sober at the bad parties, but was there. Now he is defending his party and contradicting Lauterbach, saying that renewable energies must not only be promoted but even “unleashed”. Although he doesn’t say who is holding her gagged. “I know you have a difficult position in your party,” said economic researcher Claudia Kemfert, comforting the lion’s cave adventurer.
With the ZDF meteorologist Katja Horneffer, not only a background Mainz joins in the evening sun, but also in the midst of the soulful scolding of the present, precise and quick explanations of facts: “150 liters of rain per square meter” has been there since the weather records began never given. She explains the jet stream, lifts the veil of ignorance over orography (“Where the rain comes down is important”) and sums up for the last carefree hydrology-with-hydraulics-confused cheerful nature: “Too much of everything is always bad.”
The only one who looks around happily at the end is Maybrit Illner, who wishes that you stay “as healthy as possible”. Eckhard von Hirschhausen looks sadly into space.
Marlene Knobloch: Marlene Knobloch is a freelance, streaming author, but dreams of televisions in the kitchen and bedroom. Every Sunday she could doze off linearly to the come-good-for-the-week wishes of the night magazine presenters with thousands of viewers in Germany. Until then, she watches old Harald Schmidt episodes on her laptop while peeling potatoes.