"I'm just asking the question" has become popular with various groups that don't have counter-facts. Instead, they couch statements as questions or use them to chip away at opposing, reasonable arguments. No answer to the question (other than the one they intended) will ever be accepted, and facts will just raise more questions or moved goalposts. Then, when these people finally get shut down or yelled at for being jackasses, they claim persecution.

It was a VERY popular tactic with anti-vaxxers or pro-Russians on social media before Facebook etc became mostly a bot-populated desert.