Derk Tummers: TV Walkout After Statement Confrontation – Joop

Are men too emotional beings for talk show discussions? That question arises again now that Wierd Duk has walked away from an EO broadcast.

The ultra-right agitator was in the program next to Ronit Palache, with whom he worked at the right-wing weekly Elsevier earlier this century. Palache was surprised that the EO allowed Gert-Jan Segers to enter into a discussion with Duk about a tweet the latter had posted two weeks ago.

“I find it insane that Gert-Jan is bothered by a troll army from Wierd Duk for three days that he never takes any responsibility for,” she continued. Duk’s supporters are known for intimidating people with whom he disagrees. When this is pointed out to him, the former journalist washes his hands of innocence.

When Palache also confronted Duk with statements he had made in his own podcast (“You say: ‘It may be an apocryphal story, but I’ll share it anyway, because I heard it.'”), it became too much for Duk. He got up from the table and shouted that Palache was lying. She pointed out that she had only quoted him.

Duk prefers to join programs in which he is surrounded by supporters, such as Today Inside and News of the Day. If, exceptionally, the Telegraaf columnist receives pushback in a broadcast, he immediately starts hitting around like a man possessed. This happened, for example, when former Russia correspondent Olaf Koens confronted him at BNR in 2022 with his stories about MH17. Duk spread Kremlin propaganda by sowing doubt about the circumstances of the attack that killed 298 people, including 198 Dutch.

“There are few people in the Netherlands who have hurled as many conspiracy theories about the MH17 into the airwaves as you,” Koens told him. Duk responded at the time as he also responded to Palache this weekend: by denying the facts.