A lot of times it's because they're asking yes/no questions or questions that should have simple, factual answers but the other party refuses and instead uses a lot of words to dance around giving a direct answer.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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should have simple, factual answers but the other party refuses and instead uses a lot of words to dance around giving a direct answer.
Yes, but some questions aren't simple "yes or no" questions. For example, one Republican asked, "Do you support it being legal to abort an unborn child up to the moment of birth?" That's not really a yes-or-no question, and I think it's a poorly framed one.
Even where abortion is legal, there are generally legal limits, often somewhere between 4 and 24 weeks, depending on the jurisdiction. If a woman chooses to continue the pregnancy, she's not going to reach her due date and suddenly decide, for absolutely no reason, "I'm going to have an abortion." If she decided she didn't want to raise the baby, she would give birth and place the child for adoption. The only situations where an abortion that late in a pregnancy occurs are severe medical emergencies, where doctors are trying to save the mother's life or address a catastrophic pregnancy complication.
So, that question is, in my opinion, misleading and doesn't have a simple "yes or no" answer. If you watch the hearing, the witness starts to answer the question, and then the politician interrupts them. How can you know what their answer was if they aren't allowed to finish?
The mature thing to do in a conversation is to let someone answer the question. If they dance around the answer, then say, "Okay, I hear you, but you didn't actually answer my question, so let me ask it again." But if I start to answer and only get half a word out before you interrupt me, that's not how you have a conversation. They don't even have time to dodge the question.
They also have a limited amount of time to make their point, so some of them choose to do it in rude and cruel ways... mostly Republicans.
But I mean, none of them (Republicans) are acting in good faith anyway, so there's your real answer.
You have to be acting in good faith to actually ask a legitimate question and/or give a legitimate answer. These people are propagandists. Short and simple.
If you think it is mostly republicans then you are not honest in your evaluation of who is doing what why. Confront your bias.
I'm not exactly a Democrat cheerleader, but I've seen way more reasonable questions from Democrats in the House and Senate and shutting down unreasonable answers from Republicans and corporations. If they're not letting Republicans answer, it's because the answers are clearly not in good faith.
"No Republicans are acting in good faith" doesn't mean "only Republicans aren't acting in good faith".
Fair enough, but the other comments reveal many people who think the democrats do act in good faith the majority of the time. That is also implied by the accusation of republicans, instead of politicians.
It's all Republicans, and some Democrats. Oh, and some Republicans that label themselves as Democrats, even running as one. Which should be illegal and prosecutable as election fraud.
You seem to think these are interviews or conversations intended to foster understanding. They aren't.
“Do you support it being legal to abort an unborn child up to the moment of birth?” That’s not really a yes-or-no question
You're right, it's not. It's a trick question. The senator wants a "yes" or "no" that can be used in a good clip or sound byte. Any more complicated answer is useless to them. Since they aren't interested in a real informative answer they just steamroll on to the next potently clip-able question, because they only have a couple min for their turn to ask questions.
On the other side, sometimes it's the one answering who's being disingenuous. They can give a long rambling response meant to run out the clock, rather than honestly answer. In that case the senator asking questions might want to move on because they recognize a non-answer, and again only have a couple min for their questions.
The primary problem in both cases is the time limit of the questioning. It's the very reason most of these senate testimony hearings are such a farce. A real hearing can take days or weeks to interview a single person. But that's too much to ask of congress apparently.
Also worth noting that each congressperson only gets a few minutes to ask their questions, otherwise hearings could stretch pretty much indefinitely. So a hostile witness can run the clock out by rambling, while avoiding answering the questions they don’t want to answer.
That’s why “reclaiming my time” is such a common thing to hear in these hearings: the congressperson is saying “they’re rambling instead of answering the question I asked, so I’m pausing my timer and reclaiming the wasted time they spent rambling.”
The structure of the hearings is designed for soundbites.
Each rep or senator gets x minutes, and then it switches to the other party.
For a hostile senator, the panelist is incentivized to waste as much time as possible. Qualify every statement, have drawn out answers, try not to outright lie but get as close as you can to get by the question.
The splitting between parties means there's no coordination among the senators. Each one asks the same questions. There's no followup on bad answers. Each rep wants the soundbites for their YouTube channel.
It's really bad for oversight or actually doing any governing.
The more I learn about how American politics doesn't function, the more I'm affirmed in my belief that Trump is doing the rest of the world a "yuge" favour by destroying the US' international advantages and alliances with his ignorant, egocentric tantrums and "quiet part out loud" corruption.
Because of the time they spew bullshit and avoid the questions. Anyway the hearings are performative and do not result any real accountablity
Because hearing are about grandstanding not finding actual information. They have staffers and business contacts for the actionable information.
No one pays attention to congressional hearings. So the members use their allotted time to get a soundbite in that will hopefully make it into the 24 hour news cycle.
Because it's all about getting the sound bites of them speaking/sounding tough for their campaign. Not getting to the truth of the matter
Maybe the humiliation George Galloway gave them when they let him answer still haunts them.
It's a power trip, pure and simple. They pull people into those hearings just so everyone knows how important Congresspeople are, and how the rest of the world has to bend to their will. And the questions aren't asked so that they can generate meaningful responses, they are asked so the congressperson can look like they're doing something.
Because these hearings are televised, many of the questions are not designed to elicit an informed response that can be used to carefully weigh the issue at hand; they're designed to produce a sound byte that be played on the evening news to drive a certain narrative.
While the idea of televising the hearings on the basis of transparency seems admirable on paper, the reality is that these hearings have been turned into an opportunity to ambush people with loaded questions to get free media points and farm twitter clips
if you start to spew categoric BS they'll shut you down. Usually they already know the answer, but you are there to say it yourself so it's on the record.
because they don't actually want the person to respond. they want to paint a picture of what they are trying to push across. The more they let the other person talk, the less detailed their picture becomes.
It's all of politics now a days, you don't actually ask the question for the answer, you ask the question to push the narrative.
It's personally why I can't handle listening to any form of political debate or program now. It's all in bad faith.