Weiner's tweet-hearts

He flashed a tight, uncomfortable smile and avoided eye contract as he tried to deflect point-blank questions from reporters about whether or not he had sent a crotch shot of himself in underwear to a 21-year-old co-ed in Seattle.

"Was it from you or not," demanded CNN's Capitol Hill producer Ted Barrett.To which the squirming Weiner replied:

"If I were giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone in the back threw a pie or yelled out an insult, I would not spend the next two hours of my speech responding to that pie or that insult.

"I would return to the things that I want to talk about to the audience that I want to talk to. That is what I intend to do this week."Then in another cringeworthy exchange, the Brooklyn-Queens Democrat unloaded a snarky insult instead of saying why he didn't pass on to Capitol Police his claim that his Twitter account had been hacked -- which would be a federal crime.

"I'm going to have to ask that we follow some rules here. One of them is going to be you ask questions and I'll do the answers.