- I'm going to react to your recent controversial interview
with Bill Gates on PBS.
It was supposed to be about vaccines,
but she asked Gates about his relationship
with Jeffrey Epstein,
and my feedback is not a criticism of Gates as a person.
I'm just gonna look at his specific behaviors
in this interview for educational purposes
to see what makes his communication come off as "hinky."
That's a word that police officers and other people use
to describe somebody who's acting nervous, suspicious,
but it's difficult to articulate exactly why
something seems off.
We're going to consider Gates' past behavior as a baseline
to look at his answers about Epstein.
I already watched his answers about vaccines from earlier
in the interview to see how he would normally act,
and this clip starts 80% of the way into the conversation,
when Judy Woodruff changes the topic
and starts asking questions about Epstein.
- The same focus.
I also want to ask you about something else
in the public arena.
It was reported at that time that you had a number
of meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, who,
when you met him 10 years ago,
he was convicted of soliciting prostitution from minors.
What did you know about him when you were meeting with him,
as you've said yourself, in the hopes of raising money?
- I had dinners with him.
I regret doing that.
He had relationships with people, he said,
would give to global health, which is a interest I have.
Not nearly enough philanthropy goes in that direction.
Those meetings were a mistake.
They didn't result in what he purported and I cut them off.
That goes back a long time ago now,
so there's nothing new on that.
- It was reported...
- First, he didn't answer the question.
She asked him about what he knew about Epstein
when they first met.
He replied, "I had dinners with him."
His answer is misaligned
and that's the first sign of trouble.
He's also giving off some very distracting body language.
He's shifting in his chair.
He's wringing his hands and playing with his fingers.
His eyes and his head are all over the place.
Our baseline showed us that he did some of these behaviors
here and there in his previous answers, and now,
he's doing a whole collection of them all at once,
and that optic shows that something has changed.
That also shows a misalignment between his words
and his non-verbal cues.
So if we were playing poker with Bill Gates,
we'd say he's giving off tells,
and in the field of communication,
we call this misalignment, non-verbal leakage.
There's something more going on in his mind
than what his words are saying.
He looks bottled up,
as if he's restraining himself from saying more.
We then have two layers of misalignment.
Woodruff's question and his answer misalign
and his own words and non-verbal cues misalign,
so that's a double dose of hinky behavior.
We also see a sharp increase in his disfluency.
His baseline answers were averaging a filler word
every 6.7 seconds.
That's already a lot.
His top two fillers are, ah, and, you know.
During his Epstein answers though,
he used a filler every 2.6 seconds.
That's a huge increase.
He's also repeating words and restarting more frequently.
He said, "Those meetings were, were a mistake.
"There's, you know, so there's nothing new on that,"
and he's pausing frequently in the middle of sentences
to search for words, instead of pausing at the end.
Those disfluencies are all signs of conversational trouble.
It's like his mind is the inside of a maraca
and he's fighting to keep it organized.
- Meet with him over several years, and, in other words,
a number of meetings.
What did you do when you found out about his background?
- Well, I've said I regretted having those dinners
and there's absolutely nothing new on that.
- He's obviously shaking his head
before the question is done.
He's agitated.
More importantly, he didn't answer this question either.
He just repeated the same answer he already gave.
His replies were also almost exactly the same.
He said, "I had dinners with him.
"I regret doing that the first time."
That's nine words.
For Woodruff's next question, he said,
"I have said I regretted having those dinners."
That's eight words.
To the first question, he responded,
"There's, so there's nothing new on that."
Seven words.
To the next question, he said,
"There is nothing, absolutely nothing new on that."
That's eight words.
This, to me, sounds exactly like the type of talking points
that a lawyer prepared for him on a note card.
This is not how transparent people talk
and it's not even how he talks.
In his earlier answers in the interview,
he used that as a baseline.
He used longer sentences and gave helpful details.
He's also here repeating the use of the word dinner.
That specific word sounds calculated to me.
He might be doing what the communication researchers
in crisis call minimization,
to explain things in a way that make them seem less harmful.
The statement, "There's nothing new on that,"
also sounds like minimization to me.
One way police interrogators establish if a suspect
is telling the truth is to compare a suspect's answers
with information that the police can verify in another way.
So if a suspect is lying about
or downplaying basic verifiable facts, like where they were,
they could be lying about even more important information
that police have not yet verified.
So the question is does the word dinner accurately describe
the various meetings that he had with Epstein
or is he minimizing?
Now, I'm not a detective,
but if there's verifiable information out there
that you know that establishes that these were more
than just dinners, then post a comment below about that.
But even if we put aside the fact
that he's just repeated his answer here,
let's talk about an important concept called quantity.
That's a conversational maxim,
a concept that says a normal conversation will flow well
when people provide an adequate amount
of information quantity.
It's a sign of conversational trouble
when somebody gives too much or too little information
for the situation.
So I looked at all of his answers earlier,
and his answers about Epstein are less than half
the normal length.
His first several answers in the interview
provide a baseline of a 46 second average.
His Epstein answers average just 21 seconds.
He clammed up all of a sudden,
and that's another reason he comes across as hinky.
- Is there a lesson for you,
for anyone else looking at this?
- Well, he's dead, so in general,
you always have to be careful,
and I'm very proud of what we've done in philanthropy,
very proud of the work of the foundation.
That's what I get up every day and focus on.
- So she asks him, "Is there a lesson?"
And to me, this should have been a very easy question,
but again, his answer is way off.
He replied, "Well, he's dead."
This breaks the conversational maxim of irrelevance.
His answer does not logically correspond
to what she asked him,
and that's why this moment is the weirdest one
in the interview.
As the questions get easier, his answers get less connected.
He then pivots to his work with the Gates Foundation,
and in crisis communication research,
we call this technique bolstering.
When companies and politicians get accused of wrongdoing,
they often try to refocus the conversation
on all of the good things they're doing
to bolster their image, so he says,
"I'm a philanthropist.
"I'm very generous."
Now, bolstering like this is not an admission of guilt,
but he is using it as a way to change the subject,
instead of answering a very basic question
that he was asked.
So big picture,
I don't know what really happened with Gates and Epstein,
I'm not evaluating him as a person,
but the way he handled questions were really high
on the hinky scale,
and if you want to present yourself like a credible person,
this interview is not an example of how to do that well.
So what's your point of view?
Post that below.
I'm not going to debate you,
but I'll read what you have to say, and by the way,
who else should I react to?
Let me know that below too.
Thanks, God bless, and I will see you soon.