At Maybrit Illner, the Federal Interior Minister argues with Jens Spahn about migration, the AfD and loss of trust – and both show why concentrating on the here and now is so difficult for politicians.
Not every talk show wants to revolutionize politics right away, but Maybrit Illner set out to introduce a new dimension to day-to-day business in Berlin on Thursday. More “attention” was needed, said the moderator, everyone nodded, and soon afterwards Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) repeated this. She came to the capital’s Unter den Linden studio to appear in the program entitled “Government under protest – migration crisis unresolved?” to praise the traffic light return improvement law passed a few hours earlier in the Bundestag, 800 meters away. It won’t speed up deportations to the point where they can be carried out faster than it takes to spell the name of the new rule. But the law is intended to send a message to turbulent politics: the traffic light doesn’t just argue, it does something – even when it comes to the hot topic of migration.