It’s not even a surprise anymore: Pieter Omtzigt walked away emotionally during an interview with Rick Nieman. And the images of that just appeared on TV. “He didn’t like that.”
If Gordon is already called unstable, how do we qualify Pieter Omtzigt’s continuous emotional outbursts? Now he has walked away again during an interview with Rick Nieman, which was broadcast this morning in WNL on Sunday. The NSC leader was not in the studio, nor was the interview live, but Rick chose not to cut it.
Crying and screaming
Rick confronts Omtzigt with his behavior. “Coalition partners who openly say in front of the camera: ‘Pieter Omtzigt is crying, screaming, he is running away.’ How do you look back on that?”
Omtzigt: “I thought it was very special that a number of people started quoting from the confidential negotiations.”
Rick: “Then you express yourself carefully?”
Omtzigt: “Yes.”
Pieter walks away
When Rick asks further questions, things go wrong. “They said that negotiations were difficult or even at a standstill because you did not behave in the way they had anticipated.”
After twelve (!) seconds of silence, Omtzigt says: “Can we stop for a beat? Wait a minute.”
Rick then: “And why do you want to stop?”
Omtzigt: “Yes, well, let me… Can I… Can I please? Yes…”
Then he takes a sip of water.
“Wait a minute!”
After another ten (!) seconds, Omtzigt asks for another break. “Yes, wait a minute, can it be one count?”
Rick: “Yes.”
After an additional fourteen (!) seconds, Rick starts again: “I’m asking you…”
Then changes: “No, wait a minute.”
After another ten seconds Omtzigt walks away. It is unclear how long he will be out of the picture – there is a cut – but when he returns, the political leader acts as if nothing has happened.
To the studio
After the interview, Rick tells us in the studio that he actually wanted Omtzigt live in the show. “We naturally asked if he wanted to come to the studio. That seems logical to me. He didn’t want that for all kinds of reasons, including because of his own condition, I would say, at the moment.”
“Then we said: ‘Okay, that’s fine, this time we’ll make an exception and come to Twente’, but then of course we’ll just do an interview like we always do. As if he were sitting here.”
Not cut out
And that means that nothing is cut out, says Rick. “So at a certain point he doesn’t want to answer what I think is a fairly obvious question, just how he looks back on the past year… We decided to just broadcast that and we told him so right away .”
Omtzigt was furious about that. “He wasn’t happy about that. No. And that’s an understatement. The complexity of this issue is that all journalists and politicians and people who have ever dealt with Omtzigt know that he – and this has also been very much discussed in the newspaper and in TV moments – exhibits remarkable behavior every now and then.”
Pee
Television is simply television, says Rick. “We have also had an actress here who really had to pee, who walked away live during the broadcast and then came back. We also showed that live on the broadcast, because it is live. In that respect it also applies to this interview.”
“We thought this was a good and honest image.”
Fragment
The interview with Omtzigt (the painful moment starts at 4 minutes and 35 seconds):
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Omtzigt’s response: