Totally agree on all points. If someone said "exterminate the vermin", though, the ideal follow-up would be to ask "who or what are the vermin? And what do you

Totally agree on all points. If someone said "exterminate the vermin", though, the ideal follow-up would be to ask "who or what are the vermin? And what do you mean by 'exterminate'?" Weasel words are always going to dog whistle, but if you think that someone is implying something, the best scenario is to get them to explicitly agree or disagree with that statement. Definitely not applicable in all cases, but if a person explicitly says "I did not mean to imply X, and I disagree with X", then it seems a good rule of thumb to believe that they do in fact disagree with X.