Scholz entertains the Greens with an unintentional error
The Greens and Social Democrats aren't exactly chortling right now. A gaffe from the Chancellor brought a smile to their partner in the coalition.
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz made the crowd at a Green Party event chuckle with an off-the-cuff remark. In his speech at the summer reception of the Bundestag faction in Berlin, the SPD politician mentioned the reluctance in Germany toward supporting Ukraine, widespread among the population and in the Bundestag. "But it's really quite remarkable that the faction..." - Scholz mispronounced - "BSW is completely...".
The Chancellor didn't complete his thought, as he was cut off by laughter from the audience. "I meant to say Sahra Wagenknecht's faction, not mad cow disease!" Scholz remarked, clarifying his slip-up. BSE stands for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease.
Scholz censored BSW, an alliance led by Sahra Wagenknecht, and most of the AfD for not attending Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's speech in the Bundestag. This absence was consistent given both parties' stance against supporting Ukraine during the election.
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Despite the mispronunciation, Scholz quickly acknowledged his mistake, clarifying that he intended to mention Sahra Wagenknecht's faction, BSW, not BSE which stands for bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The Greens, allied with Scholz's Social Democrats, found humor in the Chancellor's slip of the tongue, given their past disagreements on supporting Ukraine with BSW being one of the parties critical of such a move.
