I think part of the reason this went over badly is that in the US, there is a well-known and widely hated talk show host named Glenn Beck whose favorite rhetorical trick is to disguise attacks as questions, saying things like “Is it really true that so-and-so eats babies?”, repeating it enough times that his audience comes to believe that person eats babies, and then defending his accusations by saying “I’m just asking questions”. So some of us, having been exposed to that in the past, see questions and rhetoric mixed a certain way, subconsciously pattern-match against that, and get angry.
I think part of the reason this went over badly is that in the US, there is a well-known and widely hated talk show host named Glenn Beck whose favorite rhetorical trick is to disguise attacks as questions, saying things like “Is it really true that so-and-so eats babies?”, repeating it enough times that his audience comes to believe that person eats babies, and then defending his accusations by saying “I’m just asking questions”. So some of us, having been exposed to that in the past, see questions and rhetoric mixed a certain way, subconsciously pattern-match against that, and get angry.