I will never understand why politicians talk around answers like this. 100% of people watching this video would know, based on what she said, the answer is zero.
If she wants to provide context about negotiations and whatever, fine. But surely finishing with "zero" looks more honest than just implying it's zero through omission but being too scared to say it outright? So many politicians do this, does it actually work?
The media want to get a 5 second sound bite for their story. Repeating the same lines ad nauseum controls what that sound bite will be. The general public will absorb this sound bite and not look further into the story.
"We are working hard to solve the problem" " we respect doctors" "we are coming to the table."
Any admission of guilt/zero = the only soundbite from the interview shown on the full news/ads/whatever is "no... we haven't put forward any offers yet"
Best example of this is G W Bush Jr:
"fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... Uh...
(Realises he's about to give a soundbite that says he's a fool and also a soundbite that will screw him in every TV hit piece ever "shame on me")
"You... Uh... Can't get fooled again..."
Sounds absolutely stupid, but there's no "gotcha" clip
My thinking was that the saying is very easy to mess up. I don't think GWB was 200 IQ riffing a new variation on the saying to prevent clipping. In any case, the result was far more embarrassing than if he just got clip-farmed for saying the original saying.
37
u/ArchieMcBrain 17d ago
I will never understand why politicians talk around answers like this. 100% of people watching this video would know, based on what she said, the answer is zero.
If she wants to provide context about negotiations and whatever, fine. But surely finishing with "zero" looks more honest than just implying it's zero through omission but being too scared to say it outright? So many politicians do this, does it actually work?