Jens Spahn, BSW, AfD, J.D. Vance: The consolation that the Union has found no one better than Spahn

Mr. Küppersbusch, what was bad last week?

Friedrich Küppersbusch: A feeling of powerlessness.

Küppersbusch: Now we can deal with it.

taz: Jens Spahn's political career is not over after the surrogacy debate: He should now become a member of the budget committee. Is Spahn the right person to handle taxpayer money?

Küppersbusch: One almost wants to be comforted that the Springer-Union-Fronde, which agitates for black-brown coalitions, has repeatedly failed to find a more serious candidate than Spahn. In the future, he will not only cloud up his mask fiasco in the Budget Committee as an invited witness. But as a full member Spahn finds the statements of the heavily burdened witness Spahn convincing. There is at least 2.3 billion euros in dispute, in addition to his private, rather acrobatic deposits in the area of ​​real estate financing. If they had been looking for the most unsuitable housekeeper, Spahn would have been guaranteed a top 3 position. Spahn can no longer disappoint and what is more repulsive is the nameless party friends who say very clearly what they think of the pack of voters when they promote him again and again.

taz: In Thuringia, the BSW continues to dissolve after party leader Wagenknecht announced that the BSW would not prevent the AfD's top candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, from becoming prime minister in the third round of voting. Is the AFDBSW now finally being founded?

Küppersbusch: This rubble group can immediately rename itself “Sahrology” or “the Sahara desert”. Historical side contradiction: The Nazis got power in 1933 because the bourgeois center - Center, Bavaria, state party, others - handed them over. There were high-powered crackpots on the left and right who could quickly agree on the destruction of democracy, then as now. Useful idiots in the general failure of the state-supporting class. And that's the meanest thing you can say about Wagenknecht: In this role she is completely irrelevant and replaceable.

taz: Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) is discussing deportation centers outside the EU with EU colleagues. Do they now have a majority in Europe?

Küppersbusch: According to the ECJ opinion, “return hubs” are possible if international law is respected, human rights standards are observed, the victims are not isolated, they are represented by a lawyer and can reach their relatives and authorities. Oh stupid, thinks Dobrindt, then we can leave them here. And that may be significantly more than some EU partners give their asylum seekers. Dobrindt's boss Merz can't manage an interview at the moment without celebrating her uplifting successes in sealing people off and sending them away. Which actually go back to a large extent to the innocent-looking Greens, FDP, and traffic lights. In any case, he is either enormously successful or needs “deportation centers” abroad. Both together are nonsense, or AfD.

taz: The band Alphaville was first excluded from the Glücksfühle Festival and then invited back again. Is this primarily about cowardice, about the courage to protest, or just about commerce?

Küppersbusch: Why not everything? Alphaville did not perform, but their signature song “Big in Japan” was quoted by other acts such as Nura, Ski Aggu and Tom Gregory. It was the quickest canonization of a song as a political statement the band could have hoped for. Singing brother Andreas Galabier, who was allowed to perform, received a lot of scolding from his colleagues for his choice of lyrics, which here and there smelled unromantically of Wehrmacht boots. The whole thing was cleverly managed and made public; In addition, too much party book setting was avoided. The act now ranges from the left to, say, “liberal Christian Democrats clap along” – well done.

taz: US Vice President JD Vance believes in the biblical apocalypse and does not rule out that the end times have already begun. Does this mean Trump wins the midterms?

Küppersbusch: Vance's religious esotericism may catch the attention of US evangelicals, "there is pus behind the horizon" or something like that, at least that is why they may believe that the war crimes against Iran are modern crusades for the liberation of Israel and the final return of the Lord. Yes, yes, but gas price. I hope this has more traction.

taz: Merz has to win elections, Putin can simply throw unpopular candidates out the window. He also has nuclear weapons. Should we be a little more cowardly in our relationship with Russia?

Küppersbusch: Over the last 120 years, we Germans have had stress with tsarist, bourgeois-monarchical, Leninist, Stalinist and now Putinist Russia. Interesting that in none of these cases was it our fault.

Küppersbusch: One zero at home against Viktoria Köln, sixth place in the table, a déjà vu season is looming.

Friedrich Küppersbusch is a journalist and producer and enjoyed Sunday until 6 p.m.