I imagine how he really wanted to answer was something like "How dare you not believe the lies I've been feeding you since the moment you could understand human language even though I was about to kill your girlfriend's dad who was clearly in your line of sight?"
I'll be honest, that really pissed me off. Like, despite whatever, I imagine he was trying to raise his kid the best he could, so did he really think he would buy such a blatant deflection?