Pieter Omtzigt did not explode behind the scenes of Khalid & Sophie this week, despite the fact that he was visibly unhappy with the interview by Khalid Kasem. “He’s making progress.”
It is still used against Pieter Omtzigt: the burnout he ended up in and which caused him to have a pretty short fuse for some time. Last year he went on a very serious rampage in the HLF8 studio. “He was shouting quite a bit until the editor did not want to continue talking to him,” he said at the time.
Screaming Pieter
Sam Hagens, political reporter for Hart van Nederland and Today Inside, was present at the time. Does he think Omtzigt can become prime minister with the pressure that comes with it? Wilfred Genee asks him: “Absolutely the best in terms of content, but you also need someone who has a somewhat stable character, right?”
Sam thinks about this in a nuanced way, as appears in the column In The Walkways. “That has gotten better, I think. Of course I follow him very closely. We saw a number of times last year that things were not going well for him and that he started shouting behind the scenes.”
Didn’t explode on Khalid
Wilfred is skeptical about it. “You think he’s lost that for the rest of his life and that it will never return?”
Sam: “Well, this week he was with Khalid & Sophie. Did you see that? He wasn’t happy then. It was quite an okay broadcast, but you could see from Pieter’s face that he was really not happy.”
Wilfred: “No, but he quickly becomes unhappy.”
Sam: “But he didn’t shout there behind the scenes.”
Rude attitude
According to viewers, host Khalid Kasem had a very rude attitude towards Omtzigt, but he did not explode afterwards. Wilfred: “If that is the win…”
Sam: “That’s better than last year.”
Wilfred: “Yes, but if you start from scratch it will get better very quickly.”
Burnout
You can’t continue to use that burnout against Omtzigt, Sam thinks. “The thing is… If someone ends up in a burnout and that is not his fault… It is also how he has been treated by Rutte and the CDA. You have to take that into account for a while, but now that is done and he may become the greatest, perhaps even prime minister.”
Still, he is curious how Omtzigt would do as prime minister. “Soon he will have to speak to journalists all the time and in the international playing field he will also have to deal with very difficult factors and he will be under pressure.”
Wilfred: “I’m a bit worried about that.”
Sam: “But yes, then there is no camera.”