The chairman of the AfD Tino Chrupalla evades unpleasant questions in the summer interview of the ARD. But interviewer Matthias Deiß doesn’t just let him off the hook. The TV review.
Should one speak with rights? Not only the public broadcasters have been asking themselves this question at the latest since the self-proclaimed alternative for Germany is represented in all state parliaments of the republic and also in the Bundestag. For the upcoming federal election, the AfD is now even sending a top candidate into the race, Tino Chrupalla, who was a painter before his political career and is now the national spokesman for his party.
After he was touched gently by Theo Koll in the ZDF summer interview last summer, today he answered questions from ARD Matthias Deiß, deputy studio manager of the ARD capital studio – and faced a much tougher opponent.
At first, Deiß ticked off topic by topic in a pedantic manner and worked his way through the AfD’s election platform. It started with Corona and the AfD’s attitude to vaccinations. Chrupalla emphasized that vaccinations should be voluntary, especially since the benefit of the vaccinations is supposedly still unclear.
Since Tino Chrupalla took office, the AfD’s approval has fallen from 15 to 10 percent
Chrupalla tried to dismiss the fact that the AfD’s approval rating had fallen from 15% to 10% since he took office and clung to the party’s mantra that it was a people’s party in the eastern German states.
Germany should get out of the EU, it says in the party’s program, but how does that fit with the shortage of skilled workers in the country? Slowly a pattern became clear, as Chrupalla tried again to divert attention and to direct the question to the problem of school leavers who could not get an apprenticeship position.
Report from Berlin – The summer interview with Tino Chrupalla
ARD, from Sunday, August 8th, 6:05 p.m. Available in the ARD media library.
It then became clearer on the subject of climate change that it was not just the recent extreme weather that was at the top of the agenda. Or at least it should be, because Chrupalla did not want floods and hurricanes simply to be attributable to the increased CO² emissions, i.e. people. There would have always been floods, Berlin was under ice a thousand years ago, etc. Isn’t that so bad?
AfD boss exercises the usual vagueness in the AfD’s summer interview and evades
In the usual vagueness, the topic of donation affairs continued, party leader Jörg Meuthen and especially Chrupalla’s co-top candidate Alice Weidel were recently exposed to harsh accusations. But even the fact that Weidel and her Baden-Württemberg regional association had to pay a fine of almost 400,000 did not induce Chrupalla to take a clear stance: “What do I have to do with it?” He simply asked.
| Surname | Tino Chrupalla |
|---|---|
| Political party | AfD |
| position | Party leader |
| mandate | Member of the Bundestag |
Slowly, however, Dieß got going and began to ask questions and insist on concrete answers, but Chrupalla still eluded any clear statement in an almost comical way: In the 60-second round, in which the questions were answered with yes, no or a short sentence if possible to be answered, he replied to the question of whether Hans-Georg Maaßen should go back to the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution: “Not my construction site”, which one can still understand. But it went on like this: “Whatsapp or Telegram?” – “Depending on.” “What was the last thing you apologized for? Very long pause, then a somewhat embarrassed “I don’t remember now.” “Best Chancellor in German history?” – “Konrad Adenauer.” At least.
AfD exposed in the ARD summer interview: Tino Chrupalla has no problem with right-wing extremists
At the end of the conversation, Dieß finally proved that it can be worthwhile to insist and to repeat a question three or four times: On the state list of the AfD Saxony, candidates like Jens Maier or Siegfried Droese are behind Tino Chrupalla may claim right-wing extremist attitudes with the permission of German courts. Even party leader Jörg Meuthen has distanced himself from some of these candidates, a reasonably clear position that Chrupalla does not seem capable of. Only when repeatedly asked whether he would again abstain from the vote as part of the party executive who made the list of these candidates, Chrupalla finally and finally answered with a rather subdued: Yes.
So two things can be taken away from this summer interview: On the one hand, the party leader of the AfD has no problem if his party positions right-wing extremists and, on the other hand, that it is quite possible to interview rights with a clarity and sharpness that the End the AfD exposed itself. (Michael Meyns)
