“Rambozambo!” shouts Friedrich Merz in his victory speech. Excuse me?

At the end of his victory speech at the CDU headquarters, the Konrad Adenauer House in Berlin, the Chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz makes a strange exclamation: "And what have I been saying in the last few days? Now Rambozambo can be in the Adenauer House!" No, not Rambazamba, but "Rambozambo". Anyone who thinks Merz has made a slip of the tongue is wrong. The audience breaks out into applause and cheers. They are obviously in on the "Rambozambo" joke.

Originally, the term was actually a slip of the tongue by Merz during the election campaign. And this was not his only slip-up. After the TV debate with Olaf Scholz, a journalist asked him questions from social media: "Will Bubatz remain legal?" - Merz: "Will anything remain legal?" - "Bubatz" - "What is Bubatz?" - "Grass." - "So if you mean cannabis, then I say no."

Friedrich Merz, 69 years old, had revealed himself to be a boomer in the eyes of younger viewers. They found him "cringe" (youth German for: embarrassing), but his slip-up went largely unnoticed. Until TV entertainer Stefan Raab dug up the video clip and made it big on his RTL show last week in a new, so-called CDU election campaign song.

In his show "You won't win a million here," Stefan Raab presented election campaign songs for the FDP, the Greens, the SPD and also the CDU this month: "I think Friedrich Merz is throwing a party tonight / I've dressed up really nicely and brought Bubatz with me," rapped Raab over a hip-hop beat, all in white with a gold chain and sitting coolly on a sofa with his legs apart. The excerpt described above was then played: "What is Bubatz?"

Raab continued: "Then I'll get the Lambo, and then we'll do . . ." Merz intervened: ". . . here in the house: real Rambozambo!" The pop techno sound was overwhelming, the crowd was jumping in the video, the yellow lettering "Rambozambo" popped up, lights sparkled.

In the second verse, Raab sang: "I'm pulling a bag (a joint) into my hat with Fritze / We're shouting out loud: super cool Fritze!" The joke is that Friedrich "Fritze" Merz is not exactly the politician you would imagine a stoner to be because of his age and his stance on the liberalization of cannabis.

Merz reacted to Raab's song on social media: He said he was happy to have made a small contribution to pop culture with "Rambozambo". The professional politician knows how to use Stefan Raab's nonsense to his advantage and ostentatiously presents himself as a stuffy, older gentleman who does not pander to the young but stands by his boomer status, does not know words like "Bubatz" and sometimes makes a slip of the tongue. Without being ashamed of it.