Jeroen Pauw left no stone unturned from Frans Timmermans, who wants to become the new prime minister of our country, last night live in Renze Klamer’s talk show. “Scandalous!”
Frans Timmermans has put himself forward to compete on behalf of the combination GroenLinks and PvdA with Caroline van der Plas (BBB) and Dilan Yesilgöz (VVD) for the premiership of the Netherlands. But is this man right on the bone? Jeroen Pauw thinks not; he went wild on this political kingpin last night.
MH17 speech
Jeroen sat at the table with Renze Klamer, who started a fragment of the speech Frans Timmermans gave at the UN Security Council in 2014, just five days after the MH17 disaster. He then played very much on the emotion: “Did they hold the hands of their loved ones, did they press their children to their hearts?”
Many media praised that it was such an impressive speech, but it was painful for the relatives: did the victims actually consciously experience their end? “This was an impressive speech, wasn’t it, Jeroen?” said Renze.
scandalous
Well, no, says Jeroen. “I thought it was outrageous. Everything this man says here is a lie and he plays very much on the emotion, knowing – he knows – that none of this happened. These people were just on a plane. They watched a movie, they fell asleep or I don’t know what they all did.”
He continues: “But they weren’t doing that at all. It’s not like, ‘Honey, look out the window. That looks like a rocket, dude, coming there!’ That was of course not the case at all. That whole moment that is being sketched here never happened.”
‘This is not possible’
Jeroen thinks it is misplaced. “I understand very well that you use emotions, because for whatever reason that is sometimes useful and certainly in politics, but you can’t play with it like that, I think, as he did there.”
Renze: “No, of course that was also discussed two months later when he was sitting at your table.”
A few months later, Frans was on Jeroen’s talk show, where he wanted to prove that things could have gone the way he sketched. He overdid himself by asking: “You know that someone has been found with an oxygen mask on their mouth? So he had time to do that.”
This was new to everyone and relatives were in shock: is more known about MH17 than has been told? Frans went deep into the dust a day later.
False suggestion
This was also a false suggestion from Frans, says Jeroen now. Playing on the emotion. “There has never been a moment when anyone has put a mask over their mouth. It may be – it is assumed – that somewhere in all the chaos in which people have ended up there has been such an image that there has been a face mask.”
But that was not consciously gained, Jeroen emphasizes. “He has been incredibly beaten up. Throughout the evening and night, family detectives were there who had to call the relatives of MH17 to make arrangements to explain that this did not go at all as was now more or less assumed.”
‘He does this more often’
Jeroen never heard from the angry Frans again; he has been boycotting him ever since. “And he does this more often. For real. We had a storm three weeks ago and a lady died in that storm and Frans Timmermans says: ‘Yes, it’s all because of the climate!’ You don’t like people…”
He concludes: “Look, politicians are used to using people for their story. (…) They use civilians as extras for their own story. Okay, we have more or less accepted that, but if you go so far as to even use people who crash into your own story… Yes, I think that is 2.0, sorry.”
Political scientist Julia Wouters then jumps into the breach for Frans, noting that he is a warm, empathetic man. Jeroen: “You’re from the PvdA, aren’t you?”
Julia: “Yes.”