When I was a government civilian, I was taught to answer all journalist questions with "I cannot confirm or deny that". I guess it is sort of an answer that provides the most entropy so that receivers of the answer cannot logically deduce which side of the answer is more probable.

The answer malik provided is strange because she mentions the topic that is asked (big mike, even adds an eggplant emoji to make it fun), and then provides her "mom"'s full name -- almost as if to intentionally bring attention to this topic for those unaware