In 2001 ABC’s Connie Chung interviewed Congressman Gary Condit about his relationship with Chandra Levy, his then missing intern with whom Condit was romantically linked. Condit was the prime suspect in her disappearance and murder, so he agreed to a TV interview to “clear the record.” To say he did not accomplish that objective is an understement. Every time Connie Chung asked him directly about their relationship, Condit repeated the mantra, “I’ve been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life. But out of respect for my family, out of a specific request by the Levy family, it is best that I not get into the details of the relationship.” This made him seem slimy, evasive, and guilty. It turned out that Levy had been murdered by a stranger, but Condit’s career was as dead as she was thanks to the image he conveyed in that interview.
Evading a question by repeating the same answer word for word every time it is asked is an unethical practice, and a damning one. It might as well be accompanied by two boldly lettered signs one reading, “I’m afraid to answer these questions, but I think if I keep evading them the public is too stupid to figure that out” and the other reading, “This statement is brought to you by my lawyer.” Yet Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the putative leader of the Democratic Party did a Gary Condit impression when he was asked four times about the apparent implosion of the Graham Platner campaign to be the Democratic nominee to unseat RINO Maine Senator Susan Collins.
Here is how it went :
Ethics Alarms 
It doesn’t have to be all voters. Maybe he just figures that voters in Maine are too primitive to watch TV…….
Usually repeating yourself is a tactic you use when you hold all the cards and you want somebody to shut up, you’ve given them your answer and you’re not going to change it. I’ve done that with other lawyers, and it frustrates the hell out of them, but of course never with a judge.
“Evading a question by repeating the same answer word for word every time it is asked is an unethical practice”
I figured repeating the same question incessantly would also be considered unethical.
Why? Demonstrating that the interviewee is an evasive hack has its own informative value. Now, a lawyer doing this to a witness who has evoked the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination—that’ssanctionable. In the infamous questioning that brought down two college presidents, Rep. Stafanik got three of them to resort to parroting pre-programmed responses, and that was entirely a good thing, as it demonstrated the incompetence of our major educational institutions.
There are what, four general responses to a yes or no question?
Yes; No; I don’t know; I’m not answering
He gave the “I’m not answering” answer. Incessantly badgering him on a question he’s already responded to wastes viewers’ time, doesn’t expand on any information and in fact, in some instances can strongly suggest implications that are not there. His first squirmy “I’m not answering” was informative enough.
We had dinner the other night. Prior to eating I had had a large cup of water – which if anyone knows, can tend to stave off hunger after it’s settled in. Well, still feeling hunger, I piled up what my wife made on my plate. We sat down to eat and after a couple bites the water I’d previous drank caused the feeling of satiation. So I stopped eating. Only had a couple bites.
A particularly cantankerous relative was over that evening and asked “Don’t like the food?”
“No, it’s great, but I’m full.”
“You didn’t eat much, you didn’t like it did you?”
“No, I had a cup of water prior and now I’m full”
“I bet you say that when you don’t like the food”
“No…I’m full.”
“Did you like the cooking or not? Just tell us”
“I TOLD YOU I’M FULL”
I don’t see how repeated questions when an answer is supplied isn’t unethical. I don’t even know if a canned response to a repeated question is unethical – the Condit example given was already an ethically loaded topic of conversation, so I’m not certain that’s informative.
I think badgering anyone just makes the badgerer look like a twit.
In the Condit example, if you weren’t already informed enough by the non-answer answer to the question – repeated askings weren’t going to help you out and only waste your time.
Oh, I didn’t round out the dinner convo – to be clear after I raised my voice after the umpteenth hassle they responded “wow, getting testy”
Jack wrote, “Democrats are going to pretend Platner isn’t the walking disaster that he is, and hope voters are too dumb to recognize what they are doing.”
Isn’t that’s the tactic they used with Harris for President, now they’re using the same tactic and expecting different results? That’s insanity.
How can any politician, especially one as experienced as Schumer, think this is anything but an evasive, insulting, obnoxious way to respond to reporters?
Answer: because when you get to Schumer’s level, you can get away with it even if you, know, the reporter, and the audience all know that it’s bullshit.
There’s a small subset of the population who can get away with this nonsense – high-ranking politicos, Fortune 500 CEOs, superstars from the world of sports, music and film – and that’s about it. And the reason they can pull this stuff is because for the reporter, future access to these people is usually MUCH more valuable than anything related to the truth.
Jack, you remember my radio days. I occasionally had politicians on as guests, and some of them pulled this tactic. My rule of thumb was to ask the question three times, politely, and if they didn’t give a reasonable answer I’d move on to a new question. I used to get emails from listeners to the effect of “He wasn’t answering the question. Why did you let him off the hook?”
And my response was always the same: “Yes, he was dodging the question. I heard it, you heard it, and so did everyone else who was listening. And I have him enough time to prove to the audience that he is, indeed, an evasive weasel. I wasn’t going to get an answer to the question no matter how many times I asked it, and if I’d kept asking it would have become really boring radio.”
They always saw the point.
Here’s the opening sentence from the piece linked below which has a sub headline reading “Graham Platner is a scumbag Mainers should vote for”:
I hope Graham Platner wins his election against Susan Collins because I think Democratic control of the Senate is the best path forward for shoring up our democracy.
Americans hate cheaters – by Jerusalem Demsas
And there’s this beaut as well: Sen. Ruben Gallego said “we all know that he’s lived a very, you know, real experience.”
The explanation for all this is the Dems are desperate to get back in power so they can impeach and indict Trump. The key for the guy writing this is “saving democracy.” It means, “furthering our march to single party rule.”
And Democrats have to know that while they will certainly impeach the President should they regain a House majority, there is no path anyone can realistically see to getting a conviction in the Senate. It just won’t happen.
And their last two attempts not only failed badly, they served to largely destroy the gravitas of the entire impeachment, reducing it from “the President has committed high crimes and misdemeanors” to “enough members of Congress don’t like the President so let’s deny the will of the voting population and try to throw him/her out.”
What an embarrassment our bodies of elected officials have become – maybe not at local/state levels, but certainly at the federal level.
What used to drive me crazy was when a network “reporter” would interview of Democrat politician and the dance would go as follows: The reporter would ask a question; the politician would spout a completely non-responsive talking point chosen at random from that afternoon’s talking point memo from the DNC. The foregoing would be repeated one or two more times, then the reporter would close the interview, saying, “Thank you [politician].”
Regarding the split, given the graduate is a gymnast, I’m surprised everyone involved didn’t just let it pass. A stern talking to in the principal’s office after the fact would probably have been sufficient. Then a well drafted policy could be put in place for next year’s graduation.
Oops, you posted that comment in the wrong thread.
There is nothing wrong with politicians shutting down reporters that are trying to trip them up. Politicians repeating the same canned answer to questions, ad nauseum, is damned annoying.
Years ago the company I worked for was included in a case where a consumer took every deep pocket they could associate to their liability case to get money for something the stupid consumer had chosen to do themself. I was the engineer at the company and I was also the technical customer service support person, so I was the first person at our company that was questioned.
While being questioned by an arrogant ball busting defense attorney, I was being verbally harassed as he very intentionally laced the same root question over and over again with different false accusatory innuendo trying to anger and trip me up. I remained calm. When the fourth time came around and he had again laced the question with more false accusatory innuendo, I had had enough. I briefly gave our attorney, who had done nothing to stop the obvious harassment, a stern look and then I looked directly in the eyes of the defense attorney and calmly stated something very close to the following, “this is the fourth time you’ve asked that same accusatory question and the answer isn’t going to change because it’s the factual and verifiable TRUTH, stop harassing me”. Of course the defense attorney got angry, figuratively blew his stack, and aggressively demanded an answer, after all, how dare a non-lawyer peon like me challenge him. Our attorney finally jumped in and addressed the defense attorney’s in-your-face harassment with the judge, and the judge ordered it to immediately stop. After that, our attorney took a more active part, as he should have been doing all along. The liar plaintiff lost the case against our company.
My point is this, why don’t politicians do the same kind of thing with reporters; when multiple reporters ask basically the same question, state that the answer is the same no matter how they phrase the question and “it’s time to move on” then outright reject any similar questions with something very blunt like “what part of ‘move on’ did you not understand”. This is kind of what Karoline Leavitt does in White House briefings and, for the most part, it seems to work to shut down most reporters.
There is nothing wrong with politicians shutting down reporters that are trying to trip them up.
“Evading a question by repeating the same answer word for word every time it is asked is an unethical practice”
Dodging questions and repeating answers while maintaining good PR is a skill any politician should master; this skill may also be important in legal situations as Steve Witherspoon’s comment shows.
The ethical issue here is that Democrat politicians continue to endorse Graham Platner.
This situation cannot be compared to Gary Condit as the underlying ethical issues are fundamentally different. In Gary Condit’s interview his own ethical conduct was the issue, in Chuck Schumer’s interview Graham Platner’s behavior is the issue.
I’d say that his party’s hypocrisy and lack of integrity is the issue. Like Condit, Chuck made himself look guilty.
Question for Jack: if you were Chuck Schumer, and the Democrats have not yet decided to withdraw the endorsement of Graham Platner (and endorse Janet Mills instead), how would you have answered the questions by this interviewer?
Evading a question by repeating the same ‘stock’ answer word for word is precisely the tactic soldiers are trained to use to resist interrogation if taken prisoner by an enemy power. I certainly wouldn’t call that unethical.
But then in that case, it’s understood that the person giving the answers is an enemy.
Huh.
There is finally a reporter who is actually doing the job. Nothing unethical about that. For far too long democrats have been allowed to squirm their way out of difficult situations. There were 3 follow-up questions – good for the reporter.
Giving the same response isn’t necessarily unethical, but in this case Chuck Schumer is a weasel of the highest order – evil, unethical, immoral, unscrupulous, dishonest … the list is long.
I take the reporter’s side on this one.
I am still not convinced that Schumer’s response was unethical. If so, I would like to know what the ethical response would have been.
The ethics issue is Graham Platner, and his endorsement by many leading Democrats.
I am not saying here that Schumer’s endorsement of Platner is unethical. Schumer as Senate minority leader has a clear political goal: win the Senate majority. Assume that the Democrats have a solid reason to believe that Platner has a better chance to beat Susan Collins that Janet Mills or any other candidate, what do you reasonably expect Schumer to do? Withdraw the endorsement for Platner, and loose the chance to win the Senate majority? That would be political malpractice, and the end of Schumer’s political career. Malpractice is not ethical. So the best thing is to for him is embrace the turd, hold the nose, and support Platner. (I am making a lot of assumptions here about Platner’s electability for the sake of argument).
The downside for Schumer’s endorsement of Platner is that the Democrats are now estopped from criticizing Trump for his endorsement of Paxton over Cornyn in Texas, as Paxton has his own ethics issues. Cornyn is a RINO and Paxton is solid MAGA; hence Trump’s endorsement. Trump took a risk here, but if Paxton wins the Senate seat than Trump’s calculation is correct.
The most ethical thing you can do in war is to just win it conclusively, the sooner the better. The similar thing applies to politics, winning elections, winning votes in Congress, and getting the agenda enacted as promised to those who voted for you is often the most ethical thing to do; but you often have to take some ethics hits.
In previous posts a gubernatorial election in Louisiana was referred to, which was won by Edwin Edwards and lost by David Duke. The campaign slogan was “Vote for the crook, it is important!” The voters did the ethical thing by holding their noses while voting for Edwards.
So I am not going to criticize Schumer for standing by a problematic candidate, if he has no good options. Schumer knows how the game is played in Washington, and a Senate Minority Leader has a duty to zealously fight for the interests of his party (like a defense attorney has a duty to zealously fight for the interest of his client no matter how guilty they are).
The ethical response would be honest. It isn’t that hard. Say the soft part out loud: he may not be the perfect candidate, but we firmly believe it is in the best interests of the nation for our party to control the Senate, and that means defeating Susan Collins. Mr Platner can do that, and I am confident that he can grow into the job once he is elected, regardless of the mistakes he may have made in the past.