At least now you are awake. Because despite interesting interlocutors like the former US security advisor John Bolton, the range of topics is rolling in Maischberger – the week at the beginning of the show every suspense arc flat. Afghanistan, the future of the USA, predictions about the desire for a change in politics in Germany (actor Jochen Busse: “I see that: I’m a tram driver, I also drive the train, also second class – people don’t want that anymore”) and the Triell merge into an election campaign exhausted late summer yawns. Until the two outer flanks of parliament appear for “the election duel”: Beatrix von Storch, deputy federal spokeswoman for the AfD and Amira Mohamed Ali, parliamentary group leader of the Left, who doesn’t have to do much that evening to pass through as a moderate midfield.
There is some contradiction from the start. Beatrix von Storch sits in bright red trousers next to Amira Mohamed Ali in a black trouser suit. She makes it clear: she came to bite. First harmless small talk question: Whether the two in parliament from the far left and the far right ever got that close? “I don’t think so” – “I think so. You run into each other in the hallway”, von Storch knows better.
When Mohamed Ali then replied in the negative to Maischberger’s question as to whether they had ever agreed on one point, the AfD politician intervened: “Of course.” And von Storch’s words are already rushing through the studio at a physically astounding frequency, as if she had been released from the silent convent shortly before the broadcast. In the blink of an eye you are from the Afghanistan mission (on which you already agree on some points) where you land if you “promise the whole world 1200 net euros” – doomed lawn at the AfD’s pace.
Crazy doomed lawn
Less than two minutes passed before Beatrix von Storch took a bite out of all issues, from internal combustion engines to immigration policy, and spat them out again with the words “unworldly”, “they are worse than the Greens”, “job endangering”. Mohamed Ali goes into fundamental defense: “If the left decides, then all people are worse off – that is not the case.” And then explains the tax concept, in which earners with a gross income below 6500 euros are to be relieved.
On the subject of immigration, the three voices overlap to form the trio, which trills in the alarm sound. Von Storch complains about the admission plans of the “ten or 20 or 38 million” Afghan refugees, which, despite corrections by Maischberger, she later set off to “X-million”. Ali, who has been stubborn with the moderator until then, turns to the AfD politician and asks: “We see such a need in Afghanistan and the first thing you say is: Well, you should leave it to yourself ?!” Whereupon von Storch argues with “hypocrisy” and in the next syllable travels across the Arabian Sea to Yemen, about which one does not speak at all now.
However, the most delicate topic that Maischberger introduces with a photo of a grinning Beatrix von Storch in the arms of Jair Bolsonaro is still missing: climate change. Ali defends the exit from nuclear power and the Left Party’s plan to switch to renewable energies by 2035. Von Storch mows down the reports of climate researchers in the IPCC with the well-known AfD skepticism, only to refer to them a sentence later when it comes to the need for nuclear power. Maischberger finally tries to nail down von Storch: whether humans have an influence on the climate or not? After two or three attempts to catch, the AfD politician floats away with the well-known confession: “I believe in God and not in climate change.”
When asked whether they would like to rule after four years of opposition, both of them inadvertently answer unanimously: “Of course.”
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.