REPORTER #1: On Graham Platner, are you satisfied with the explanations he’s given for the controversies his campaign has faced right now? Are you concerned by what we’ve heard?
SCHUMER: I met with Graham Platner today. We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.
REPORTER #2: So, you’re saying that Janet Mills, your preferred candidate, has been rattling that she should get back in. You’re standing behind Graham Platner, to be clear here?
SCHUMER: We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.
REPORTER #3: Does Democrats sticking behind Graham Platner, does that hurt their credibility in attacking Ken Paxton?
SCHUMER: We’re going to take back-, we’ll beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate. Any other subject you got? Any other subject?
REPORTER #4: Do you still endorse Graham Platner?
SCHUMER: “I endorsed Graham Platner. We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.”
Note that the Senate Minority Leader doesn’t really answer the one question he appeared to answer. We know he endorsed Platner. The question was whether he stands by that endorsement now that it is clear that Platner is a lying sexual deviant in addition to being a former Nazi admirer.
How can any politician, especially one as experienced as Schumer, think this is anything but an evasive, insulting, obnoxious way to respond to reporters? The obvious impression the Condit act leaves is that Schumer and the 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.
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.
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.”
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.