Wednesday, December 8th, 2021
Chancellor Scholz on “RTL Direkt”
“It is important that you stay with yourself”
Towards the end of a long and historic day, the new Federal Chancellor Scholz once again called on RTL Direkt to get vaccinated. But he also says more personal things – such as why he avoids joking in public.
In his first detailed RTL interview as Federal Chancellor, Olaf Scholz called on people in Germany to be vaccinated. “It’s obvious what is helping us now,” he said on “RTL Direkt”. “That as many citizens as possible get vaccinated.” The crisis team under General Carsten Breuer is currently organizing this. The vaccination rate is not yet high enough.
Scholz repeated that he was in favor of a general vaccination requirement. However, this could only apply from next year. Now it must be guaranteed that everyone who wanted a vaccination would get it. “We want to get ahead of the situation at some point and leave the pandemic behind us.” Scholz also praised his new Health Minister Karl Lauterbach as a proven expert and also said he would continue to exchange ideas with his predecessor Angela Merkel.
The SPD politician said he was “absolutely” also the chancellor of the unvaccinated. “When you are chancellor, you are responsible for all citizens, I feel that too.”
He doesn’t think Germany is a divided country. Different beliefs were part of a democracy. But: “If threats are part of it, then that is a border crossing. Torchlight parades in front of the house of a health minister are something that we as democrats cannot put up with.” That was exactly what happened in Saxony in front of the house of the SPD politician Petra Köpping.
Glad for time beyond politics
The new Federal Chancellor also adopted a more personal tone. For example, he explained how his political attitudes have changed since he was a young socialist. “I am very happy that after my time as a young socialist in the SPD I simply had a break where I was only a lawyer and only looked after my clients.” Scholz was an expert in labor law. That enabled him to reorient himself politically. “I explicitly say that I’m not one of those people who say that everything you said when you were 22 years old, you will still think it when you were 63.” However, his concern continues to be that justice is the yardstick of politics. “It is important that you stay with yourself and not pretend.”
The fact that there will be no Christmas tree in Scholz and his wife Britta Ernst’s living room may have been unknown to many voters. He started to drive “into the big wide world” over Christmas and New Years early on, he said as a justification.
He also explained why he refrains from joking in public. “An ironic joke to which you have to add two volumes of books to explain that it was a joke now, is something that is difficult. Many people take it as bitterly serious and I fell for it because I thought, it is clear that this is a joke. ” That happened every five to ten years and he wanted to be careful about that. But now people would get to know him in every detail.