There seems to be an overlap between scandal and crisis communication. They both are strongly based on emotionalization, moralization, and polarizing modes of communication. They provoke similar blame games and emotions. Nowadays, populist actors permanently use crisis communication and increasingly self-scandalize. However, a lot of these scandalizations remain without consequences for the scandalized politician due to difficulties to reach a party-overarching condemnation in the current polarized political environment. Against this backdrop, I look at differences and similarities of scandalization and crisis communication, especially in terms of elicited emotions and emotionalization techniques. Then, I ask what happens with these communication strategies when they are continuously (mis)used and theoretically should lose their functionality but practically seem to work in the current political context. The answer to the effective use of scandalization and crisis communication appears to lie in balancing emotionalization with the ability to channel it into appropriate emotional meaning: There should be just enough emotional energy to support and reinforce the intended message. The problem arises when those who start to use these means of communication lose control over them. Then, either opposing emotional frame or denunciative, even more polarizing discourse takes over.