Yeah, don't jump right in and try to look smarter than them. Give them the opportunity (time) to look bad on their own with no answer. OTOH, helping them save face is also a good way to go if that's someone you want to work with.
Depending on future scenarios, you can play up either side of the interpretation. It's a nice quality of really useful political moves that they can flex and can be reused for multiple purposes (kind of like... good extensible/reusable software design).