Federal election campaign: Scholz dishes out: “Fritze Merz likes to tell nonsense”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has accused CDU leader Friedrich Merz of spreading untruths about him. “Fritze Merz likes to tell nonsense,” said Scholz that evening on ZDF’s “heute journal”. Tünkram is Low German and means something like stupid stuff or nonsense. Scholz was referring to criticism from Merz that the Chancellor often sits in silence at EU summits without getting involved politically. In the Bundestag in the afternoon, Merz said that the way the Chancellor was moving in the EU was “shaming.”

Scholz continued to say about Merz: “This won’t be the only thing where he behaves like this. He has shown it many times and will continue to show it often in the election campaign. The citizens will make up their minds about it.”

Merz reacted angrily in the same broadcast. “I forbid that the Chancellor would refer to me personally and attack me in this way. But that is obviously a pattern that we are seeing now.” Merz cited as an example that Scholz had also denied FDP leader Christian Lindner’s “moral maturity” for a government office in the Bundestag in the afternoon. “He constantly talks about respect. But the moment someone has a different opinion than him, his respect just stops. I won’t stoop to that level,” said Merz.

Merz continued: “I expect this respect in our dealings with one another so that at the end of the day our democracy does not suffer any more damage than it has already suffered under the government that has just fallen apart.”

However, Merz had already attacked Scholz personally at the weekend and wrote that Scholz was isolated in the EU. “Unfortunately, you have to put it this way: the majority of European heads of state and government simply no longer want to meet the German Chancellor, who either sits in silence for hours or lectures the world.”

“The opposition leader is not the “Fritze” for the Chancellor”

Only on Thursday, Scholz, Merz and Robert Habeck, the SPD, Union and Greens’ candidates for chancellor, promised themselves and the voters a fair and respectful election campaign. That is the essence of democracy: fighting for the best solutions without belittling or hurting each other, the three made it clear in Joko and Klaas’ broadcast on Pro7.

Green Party leader Felix Banaszak criticized the Chancellor’s choice of words. “I wouldn’t have done it like that,” he said on Deutschlandfunk. “And it’s not the first time in the last few weeks that I’ve thought that during the Chancellor’s appearances.” But everyone has to decide on their own style.

Personal contact in politics should always be polite and appreciative, said CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt in the ARD “Morgenmagazin”. “The Chancellor obviously has a lot of catching up to do.”

Criticism also came from the former CDU chancellor candidate and North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Armin Laschet. “With all understanding for Scholz’s frustration on the day of his failure, ridiculing the competitor’s name is unacceptable. The opposition leader is not the “Fritze” for the Chancellor,” he wrote on X. That destroys all respect among democrats . CDU presidium member Jens Spahn, former health minister, wrote on X: “S in SPD stands for styleless.”