An hour and a half have passed since the two hiking friends shook hands at the edge of the forest in Simmerath. The gentlemen rolled up their shirtsleeves, admired the wind turbines and – accompanied by more than a hundred police officers and a dozen bodyguards – admired the spruce trees on the hills of the North Eifel. Now Hendrik Wüst, as Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the host of this black and red excursion into the countryside, is standing close behind Olaf Scholz and smilingly looks over the Chancellor’s shoulder and head. Last question, that’s where it happens: A journalist speaks to the elephant in the forest, so to speak, who has been invisibly accompanying the two politicians for ninety minutes.
Olaf Scholz and Hendrik Wüst: Rivals in the forest – politics
