186: How to Respond to Questions You Don’t Want to Answer: Bill Gates on the Today Show

Not many of us will find ourselves sitting down for an interview on a nationally televised morning news program, being asked about our friendships with convicted sex offenders. But someone did. Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. Is this an episode about how to help you respond when you are asked about your divorce or infidelity, or answering to being palsy with a convicted sex offender? No, I wouldn't want that for anyone. This episode is about the strategy. The strategy you need to answer the questions you don't want to answer. Let's discuss Microsoft co founder Bill Gates. Making a regrettable choice is inevitable for anyone. But when you're in the public eye, the stakes are higher and the risk is greater if you are fast and loose with the truth or if you refuse to admit to any truth. Last week between the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard stories. There was one crisis that caught my eye. It came in under the radar and it wasn't the crisis, it was the crisis response because my eye was not as fixed on the problem anymore. But it was the response to the problem. You all know about Bill Gates and what he went through with his marriage. It was about a year ago that the headlines read that Bill Gates and Melinda Gates were divorcing. There were not a lot of facts if you remember at the time. It was simply the story they' a divorce. You could connect dots to figure what was going on there, but we didn't know the truth or the facts. Earlier last week, Bill Gates started in on his big PR push to clean up his reputation. Gates clearly has a PR machine behind this reputation rebuilding tour. Earlier in the week I saw an interview with the Sunday Times in the uk. So it was a Sunday story. The headline was Gaetz I'm grieving the same way Melinda is. Well, that was the subhead. A year after splitting from his wife, Bill Gates tells Alice Thompson about being single again and using his fortune to combat the next pandemic. Isn't that interesting? There's a lot packed in to a subheader about what the story is about and it's interesting to say to pull the quote, I'm grieving the same way Melinda is. You do not need to be a crisis communication expert to know exactly what's happening here. He's framing the divorce as a boo hoo. Divorce is hard. I'm grieving in the same way as my ex wife. Uh, not really. I would think because grieving is a lot different in divorce, I think, when your billionaire husband may or may not have stepped out on you. And also was hanging out with a convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, even after he was convicted. So that's my editor's note. I'm imagining Melinda Gates, like sitting by and watching this PR push and she is absolutely apoplectic, like really reading what's being said. But that's personal. We're more concerned about what's happening in the public space. Let's move on to the next stop in the PR tour. Next stop, Buenos Aires, the Today show last week in an interview with Savannah Guthrie. Let me play you the opener. And as you listen to it, think about the PR team, you know, standing in the wings listening to this introduction.

Bill Gates co founded Microsoft nearly 50 years ago at the forefront of the computer age that changed the world. And since then, he's been using the fortune that earned him to change the world, the Gates foundation, giving away tens of billions of dollars over the past decade. He also famously predicted the world was unprepared for a pandemic in a 2015 TED talk that was unfortunately accurate and has been viewed now 43 million times. Well, he's sounding the alarm again this morning. His new book, how to Prevent the Next Pandemic is out today. It's also been a year of upheaval in his own life after he and Melinda, his wife of 27 years, announced their divorce one year ago today. So, Bill, we have so much to catch up on. It's good to see you. Good morning.

How's that for an open? If you were working on the PR team behind Bill Gates right now, you would be high fiving. That's quite the laudatory open for a hard hitting interview. I will save you the entire interview. I'm going to include the link in the show notes. But for the machine, basically what's happening here. Bill Gates invests lots of money in a firm. We don't know the firm. I guess with some digging I could figure that out, but it doesn't matter. We know he's spending big on this. What they're going to do is they're going to pick out his promotional tour. Who do we want to hit? Who do we want to be seen in front of? What is the timing that we want to do it? It is interesting that his first big interview was landing in the UK just from the headlines. Pretty soft story. Interestingly enough, on Twitter they promoted it the Sunday Times in a thread pulling out the highlights, which is what A lot of media outlets, press outlets are doing now with their big interviews. They're threading out the interview, so they're taking just highlights from the stories. So you read down the thread, and usually when that happens, when you try and click, you're going to hit a paywall, and you're not going to be able to read the entire interview. And that's certainly what happened with Bill Gates. If you wanted to read that whole story, you couldn't. You had to pay for it. But if you were just reading the headlines and the thread, that was a very positive news story for Bill Gates. All right, next stop, he's moving on to the Today Show. So he's hopping over the ocean, landing in New York and sitting down for this interview. So we heard the open. Now we are moving on. He's getting asked questions about his book. What timing. Writing and publishing a book on preventing and responding to the next pandemic. All right, it's newsy, but also very not so newsy at the same time. We're a little over the pandemic, but I imagine Bill Gates sitting there with his team a year ago saying, what are we going to do? And this was a long play, definitely, because if you're writing a book, part of the long play is, Bill, you got to write a book. What are we going to write about? What's everyone thinking about? Well, a year ago, it was the pandemic. A year from now, no one probably wants to talk about it. But also, it doesn't matter. Bill Gates could write a book about how to spin cotton candy and anything that he needs to sit down to detract from these questions that inevitably he has to answer. Okay, so moving on to the interview, he discusses Elon Musk, potential purchase of Twitter. This was after discussing the book. We know in this interview, he has to get to the hard questions, and he has to answer them. So how does Bill answer this question?

You and your wife Melinda, filed for divorce. How have you been coming to terms with this?

Well, the divorce is definitely a sad thing. You know, I have responsibility for causing a lot of pain to my family. You know, it was a tough year. I feel good that all of us are moving forward now. You know, my oldest got married. Melinda and I are continuing to work together. So, you know, it was sad and tragic. But, you know, now we're. We're moving together.

So there it was, a key message causing a lot of pain to my family. That's Bill addressing the infidelity rumors. Savannah didn't come right out and say it. But he's gradually getting there. Now, as an aside, the Today show needed to keep the conversation going and keeping it light. What I would assume in the backroom negotiations that Bill's team is pitching gma, they're pitching cbs, and they're pitching the Today show, and they're pitting all of them against each other. One is going to get the exclusive. NBC got the exclusive. Part of getting the exclusive is following a set of rules. Savannah Guthrie cannot come in and just pound the guy. She has to go through these certain gates, which is, oh, look at that play on words there. She has to talk about the book. She has to extensively talk about the book. Maybe the questions had to be submitted in advance, maybe not. Maybe it was agreed ahead of time that two thirds of the interview was going to be on his book or his charity or it was going to be on his book in Elon Musk. All safe territory. But NBC did make a strategic SEO move because on the subheader on the page on the website, it does say that Bill Gates talks and addresses infidelity allegation. So they were able to slip that in there. And also if you bring up the URL and the key phrasing in the URL, it is Today.com video exclusive. Bill Gates talks divorce, addresses infidelity allegation. It's not talks about the pandemic or talks about Elon Musk. They get right to the word. And infidelity. Today's show one Bill Gates PR machine zero. The key message in there, it's sad, it's tragic. We're moving forward. Does that work? Yeah. What divorce isn't sad. What divorce isn't tragic, Especially when you have kids. We're both moving forward. The message is clear. The message is good. However, the body language does not match what he's saying. This is a podcast, not a video podcast, so I can't show you. But if you were to watch this video again, the link is in the show notes his body's telling a different story. When he first sits down for this interview, he's wearing a crew neck sweater, blue, if I had to look closely, probably matching directly to his eyes. He's also sitting in a chair with a coffee cup. Not a coffee cup, it's a tumbler. He looks like he's showing up for a day at the office, like he's a guy that works in it, just sitting down, showing up for work. However, when the questions start to get a little more pointed, he starts to fidget in his chair. You can Actually hear the chair move in the clips, the easygoing guy with the cup, that guy is gone. He's nervous, he's uncomfortable. If you watch his mouth, his lips are compressed. So here's a follow up question.

She did an interview recently and she talked about times in her marriage. She said she was lying on the floor crying. What was it like for you to hear that and to hear it publicly?

Well, this was a very tough thing. We had a lot of amazing things in our marriage. The kids, the foundation, the enjoyment we had. And so it's a very hard adjustment. You know, I know divorces are different, but, you know, just a complete change. You know, we were partners, we kind of grew up together. And now that that's different, we're not married.

Right there. Gates deflected. He did not directly respond to the question about Melinda crying on the floor. Instead, he mentioned how divorce is difficult, how it's difficult to adjust as partners. It was a pure deflection. Did it work? You tell me. What do you think? The last part of that answer, though, ended a little bit with a thunk. But that wasn't the toughest question on the topic of divorce. I think this was, frankly.

There were allegations of extramarital affairs. And when she was asked about that in the interview, she said, that is a question that Bill needs to, to answer. So here you are. Now, did that happen? Were you unfaithful in your marriage? Is that one of the reasons there was a divorce?

I certainly made mistakes and I take responsibility. I don't think delving into the particulars at this point is constructive, but yes, I caused pain and I feel terrible about that.

You know, the first sound we hear from Bill, when you hear the, you know, the nervous laugh, the tells of discomfort, you can be media trained within an inch of your life and those little tells will always give away how you truly feel at the moment of the question. I certainly made mistakes, yes. He says I cause pain. I don't want to delve into it. That's admission. So it's interesting that Savannah Guthrie said in her next question that Bill Gates had a voracious. You go ahead, take a listen.

What have you learned from that? I mean, you were someone who has this voracious appetite for knowledge. And divorce is an experience that can be a journey to learning something about yourself and change, hopefully. What have you learned about yourself?

You know, there's areas like climate or health where I have expertise and on personal matters like this, I, I'm, you know, I, I don't think of Myself, as an expert, I should be very humble about, you know, success, you know, has a tricky aspect to it. So, you know, I don't. I don't have great advice for other people.

Yeah. So when you watch Savannah Guthrie asked that question, you have to look at Bill Gates response. He is stunned. He doesn't know where she's going. He's very nervous. He's very uncomfortable. I'm sure you're like me, I'm uncomfortable watching this interview. You would have to be as well, because Bill certainly is. This is a guy who I don't think is very comfortable in his own skin. Anyway, when he's speaking, there's a lot of stammering here. Now, he doesn't answer the question. And again, his face, his lips are compressed. They're tight. It's facing downward. In nonverbal communication parlance, that move in your face when it's compressed and downward means I've been caught, I've been found out. You're shrugging away the response because you don't want to answer it and you don't want to talk about it. Let's resume the squirming in the chair from an audio point of view. Yeah.

I have to ask you about Jeffrey Epstein. Melinda mentioned that that was one of the strains your relationship with him. And you know, why? I guess the question is real simple. I mean, why did you continue to meet with him? When you met him, he was already a convicted sex offender, you know, and do you regret that?

I certainly made a huge mistake, not only meeting him in the first place, but I met with him a number of times. I had a goal of raising money for Global Health. I didn't realize that in a meeting with him, almost downplayed the incredibly awful things he did. I learned more about that over time, but I'd add that to the list of big mistakes, including where Melinda's advice was sound and I should have followed it sooner than I did.

You never saw anything where you thought, this doesn't feel right. Linda kind of had a visceral reaction the first time she met him.

No, he was a. A bad person. And, you know, I had a reason that I thought those meetings would lead to something good, but I shouldn't have done them.

Savannah, you heard the. She was nervous about asking this question. You knew as soon as she did that she stammered into it, something big was coming. So you heard the answer. Now, if you were to watch him, same face, pained, compressed. But what did we hear? We heard an answer. He owned it. I made a Mistake. He explained it. He explained why they met. He did say Melinda's advice was sound. That's a great answer, by the way. The promise wasn't so much there, but if you talk about the indestructible framework, the one that I am always looking for in these situations, he owned it right away. He explained it. We missed the promise. If I had to craft this response, I would have done it the same way. I made a mistake and explained why they met. The Melinda advice was certainly a nice touch. The promise could have been, now that I know better, I will never do anything like that again. Or if I knew it then would I know now? I would never do it. Anything that shows a state of mind or a state of being of where he is now, he didn't quite do that. However, did it work? Yeah, it did. He finished talking about the foundation. He talked about his kids. That qualifies as if you're not going to promise something of your behavior or promise something of your character, your actions. You talk about moving forward. At least you talk about where you're going. Talking about his kids in the foundation, he was doing that there because the foundation continues. His kids continue to grow, get married and move on. So in my opinion, he got through it. Now, years ago, there was a time when an interview like that would not take place like that. A journalist would take more liberty with their subject, with their victim. They would pound, they would pounce, they would keep going at them. That's not the place where we are nowadays because there are too many options for big newsmakers to go and there honestly aren't that many big, big, big, big newsmakers out there. A Bill Gates is going to be one. The Today show, any of the morning shows, they're going to work with the machine to be able to grab the exclusive. So I understand what today's show had to do and they did it. Savannah Guthrie did what she had to do, but she did get answers to her hard hitting questions. At the end, Bill Gates, I think he did a sound job. The money was well worth it, I'm sure, Bill, because what happens now? He got through the interview and oh my goodness. Oh, lucky Bill. He's doing it during the middle of the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial, which is absolutely overtaking all the media. All the chatter, all the gossip, all the people who care about infidelity and marriages falling apart. They're all sucked up in Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. No one's even paying attention to Bill Gates and that, folks. That's just plain brilliance mixed with timing. In every interview, I always leave behind an indestructible PR tip. That's that one easy to remember tip that will help you keep your reputation intact. Here it is. If you have to respond to questions that you don't want to answer, answer the question. Always. You will use a lot more energy and burn a lot more calories, unwanted calories, just trying to get out of answering the question than you will if you just answer it. So if you find yourself in that difficult situation when you're answering to something, just answer it. Rip off the band aid. Use the framework. Just own it. Explain why it happened and what you're going to do moving forward. The media environment nowadays, even in your world. I'm not talking about you sitting down on the Today show. I'm talking about you doing an interview with the local paper, you responding to the press asking you to interview something, you standing up in front of a meeting where you have to speak to people who are accusing you of something or they're not happy about something. Just say it. Just answer it. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you here again next week. Bye for now.