I think I get the gist… 
I believe two good ways to counter these arguments would be to:
- Show a small function in Godbolt, comparing the results of compiling the equivalent code in C and Zig.
- Write a small, non-trivial utility / program, that does something similar to a utility written in C, and compare source code size, object size, performance, etc. And then show off cross-compilation as a cherry on top. Something like
wc?