Five Questions that I Wish Stephanopoulos Would Have Asked President Biden

And why George's reliance on closed-ended questions resulted in a terrible interview.

Before we begin, a huge thanks to

Andra Watkins

for restacking Friday’s article. That sparked an increased exposure to Relationship 101. This weekend, the subscriber number for Relationship 101 increased by 23%. Tomorrow, I’ll send out a more formalized introduction of me, Julia, and Relationship 101 to our new subscribers.

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In the last week, we’ve explored the “debate” on June 27 between President Biden and Trump. While the NYT and other elements of the mainstream media have harped on Biden’s delayed responses as a sign of cognitive decline, and have significantly increased production of articles and content asking Biden to step down, Julia and I have a different perspective for how we make sense of the mess that was the first 2024 presidential “debate”.

In 40 minutes of speaking, Trump told 602 lies. Many of his sentences contained multiple lies. And that’s before we get to his nonverbal delivery, and the fact that CNN continues to be unable to have an accurate process for fact checking Trump en vivo.

Julia and I are couples therapists with over 30 years of experience between us. We have worked with many couples where one person verbal diarrheas their perspective, often using embellishments, criticisms, and bald-faced lies to energize their delivery.

It’s really jarring, both for the person on the other end, and for us as couples therapists. As we talked about last Tuesday, this style of delivery hijacks our nervous system, kicking our flight/flight system into full effect.

It takes a lot of skill and practice to be able to interrupt the verbal diarrhea-er and provide structure around their commentary. The responses of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash mirrored my experience the first time I was in a high conflict couples therapy: A physiological shutdown, with an internal dialogue centering around “What the fuck did I just get myself into?”

While we absolutely need to have conversations about the impact of President Biden being 82 when he gets elected (or, for that matter, Trump being 79 if, God forbid, he gets elected), we believe that Biden’s response in the presidential debate can be much better explained by neurobiology than the possibility of cognitive decline.

Fast forward a week. For starters, as

Steven Beschloss

reminds us:

“In less than a week, according to journalist Jennifer Schulze’s count, the Times had published 70 stories, 20 opinion columns and four podcasts about Biden’s performance, in addition to the editorial board’s editorial the day after the debate insisting Biden should leave the race. Forget simply covering the news: This pile-on by many news outlets seems determined to force Biden out. Just this morning, after the 22-minute interview, the Times published five more stories. Clearly, the coming days and weeks will be increasingly challenging for the president to talk about anything else as the constant haranguing about his age continues.”

On Friday night, ABC News released an interview between President Biden and George Stephanopoulos. I did not watch it; we live in the Netherlands for another week, it was 2 am my time when it was released, and I was asleep.

Image: ABC News.

However, the transcript is live on the NYT website. Yesterday, I read through it with my morning coffee.

A couple of quick notes before we explore the interview.

As folks who are in the business of having conversations—I would include journalists and therapists in that conversation, we have two jobs:

1. Get as much information as possible, and ask questions that allow for that.

2. Provide a structure that simultaneously keeps the conversation going by asking open-ended questions and keeping the conversation focused.

We provide that structure by asking questions: Open-ended questions and closed-ended questions.

Closed-ended questions usually begin with verbs and are ended with upspeak, insinuating a question. “Should you eat candy before bed?” or “Do you think you should eat candy before bed?” Closed-ended questions only two answers: Yes or no. And often, if I answer the question “Yes” or “No”, continuing conversation either:

1. Ends, because I answered your question.

2. Is followed by another question to establish a particular line of thinking on behalf of the question asker. These closed-ended questions are leading questions.

Leading questions are necessary for attorneys who are trying to lay out their logic for why someone is/isn’t guilty so that a jury can keep track of the step-by-step process.

Leading questions are necessary for parents who are trying to teach their young children moral values or establish a sense of structure. Did you eat candy before bed?

In relationships between two adults, especially two equals, however, leading questions often get read (and presented) as either hedging (I’m hearing John Mayer squawking “Say what you mean to say”) or condescension.

Open-ended questions are asked with the following words:

1. What?

2. Who?

3. When?

4. Where?

5. How?

From time to time, open-ended questions only have one answer, such as in trivia shows. However, more often than not, open-ended questions have a diversity of answers, which can lead to more open-ended questions and a rich, expansive dialogue.

In the interview between Stephanopoulos and Biden, George asked six open-ended questions about the present scenario (and an additional speculative question about how he might feel in January, which I won’t include for the sake of this article)

1. What did he (your doctor) say (after the debate)? (Great question.)

2. What were you going through during the debate? (This is, of course, assuming that Biden, or anyone else in this situation, hadn’t dissociated at various points during the “debate.)

3. How quickly did it come to you that you were having a bad night? (I thought Biden answered this question extremely well.)

4. What has all that work over the last three-and-a-half years cost you physically, mentally, emotionally? Great question, although if Biden answers honestly—"You know George, the rigors of being president is extremely taxing. I haven’t slept in three years, and I am noticing the absence of sleep impacting my mood.”—the media is going to punish Biden for his honesty.

5. What’s your plan to turn the campaign around? (Great question.)

6. If you are told reliably from your allies, from your friends and supporters in the Democratic Party in the House and the Senate that they’re concerned you’re gonna lose the House and the Senate if you stay in, what will you do? (Great question.)

Stephanopoulos asked a seventh question: “Why wasn’t that (11 days after coming home from Europe) enough rest time, enough recovery time?” Why questions are complicated, because they often suggest accusation or criticism. In this context, it assumes that Biden has control over his allergies and upper respiratory system. As a 40-year-old with bad allergies, I know that all of cetirizine in the world cannot keep colds away.

To be fair to Biden, he actually answered that question really well. I would have responded with a smart ass remark like, “I don’t know George. When’s the last time you had a cold? What do you think caused it?” This is why I will never be running for political office.

George Stephanopoulos asked 23 closed ended questions—questions that only had a yes or no answer. For instance:

1. Are you the same man that you were when you took the office three and a half years ago? (Smart ass response: “Of course I’m not, you numbnuts. Even in my 80s, I’m continuing to evolve and see the world differently.” Again, I won’t be running for office anytime soon.)

2. Are you more frail? (Biden’s response of “Come keep my schedule” was brilliant.)

3. Would you be willing to have an independent medical evaluation? (Biden dodged this one for a bit, although I may have responded with “What do you mean by ‘independent’?”.)

4. Are you sure you’re being honest with yourself when you say you have the mental/physical capacity to serve another four years?

And the conversation devolved from there. The closed-ended questions began to question Biden’s integrity and honesty, Biden dug his heels in, and the conversation got nowhere.

To be fair to George, I would have been frustrated a couple of times by the way Biden dodged my questions. However, as the person conducting the interview, I have the responsibility to name that my question isn’t being answered, take a few seconds to allow both me and the folks I’m interviewing to refocus, and re-ask the question.

The Stephanopoulos interview was an absolute mess, and I place a good portion of the blame on George for this one. He establishes the purpose of his interview when he says, “What I want to get at is, what were you experiencing as you were going through the debate?” Which is fine, I suppose. But then he quickly pivots to Biden’s health. He asks a question that’s a political trap (the one about the impact of the last three and a half years), which Biden understandably dodges, and then doubles down on getting Biden to talk about his health by asking a bunch of closed-ended questions, which Biden also dodges.

And as a result, there are a lot of important questions that didn’t get asked. Here’s a few that I would have liked to have seen:

1. President Biden, how are you preparing Vice President Harris and your cabinet members about the transition that would happen should you get diagnosed with dementia, or God forbid, die in the next four years?

2. If you were to be reelected, what are the first three points of policy that you’ll be pushing? And how do you think that you’d engage these differently at age 80 than age 60?

3. For those who are interested in getting into politics in the future, what type of mental and emotional energy does campaigning require? How do you notice that you’re engaging with the demands of campaigning differently at 81 than you did in your 60s when you ran for Senator?

4. As someone who’s double my age, what would you like the public to know about the process of aging, and how this impacts family members?

5. What do you think happens to people while they are in active disagreement with Donald Trump? How do you notice Trump’s responses of interrupting you, even with his mic, impacting you?

If you are in the #bidenout contingent, you’ll still be able to assess for mental acuity based on the ways that he answers these questions. And regardless, these and other open-ended questions will give Biden (or whoever the interview subject is) the opportunity to positively reflect on their past, which results in more enriching information and dialogue.

Journalists play an especially important role in providing information to the public about the institutions and systems that are purportedly designed to protect them. George Stephanopoulos’ interview on Friday with Biden is the latest example of journalists failing to provide that service for the American public.

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Tomorrow and Thursday, we’re taking a politics break on Relationship 101 and talking about sex. An important part of sexual health and communications is transparency, which starts by asking, “Can we talk about sex?”

I assume that some of you will say no and either not open these emails or unsubscribe from Relationship 101. Which is totally fine—sex is an extremely vulnerable to talk about, even when we talk about it from the perspective of desire and positivity.

But for those of you who choose to stick around, I hope that our conversations about sexuality and desire are enriching and meaningful.

Let’s heal together!

Jeremiah and Julia