Prime minister Mark Rutte, who suffered a momentary blackout during Tuesday night’s televised final electoral debate between party leaders, has called his lapse ‘a nightmare’.
The moment came when the prime minister, who was pitted against PvdA’s Lodewijk Asscher, was going to mention two examples of uniting the Dutch but failed to come up with the second example.
‘What was the second example again? Caroliene, help, I’m lost,’ a smiling Rutte said as he turned to the audience.
The Caroliene in question is Rutte’s assistant Caroliene Hermans, the daughter of former VVD minister Loek Hermans and who stepped in her sister Sophie Hermans’ foorsteps as the prime minister’s right hand woman. It is unclear if Caroliene was actually in the audience during the debate.
Rutte told reporters afterwards he had ‘prepared himself thoroughly but what a nightmare to forget something at a time like this.’ In a reaction to the comment that ‘this never happens to you’, he said ‘Never. Isn’t is too bad?’
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/0...-debate-lapse/