Lynch talked for a grand total of 6 mins in the first round of interviews and then another 3 minutes for the Deon interview.
Go read the crap underneath the film clips online, at least HALF are people mocking his intelligence. There are people ridiculing him, making fun of his speech and mannerisms and picking apart everything he says.
It should be no shock that he doesn't want to speak since just a tiny few minutes of answering a few questions has people taking the opportunity to mock him. Who wants to enable that?
The funny part is that for all the BS, Lynch gives really intelligent grounded answers when given the chance.
The perfect example was the E60 special where they asked his response to people that called him a "thug". He pointed out how someone that came from struggling for everything was suddenly put in a situation where they had access to whatever they wanted and naturally struggled with understanding how to handle that. Then he asked if his detractors would have been able to act differently. It was a very powerful and thoughtful answer.
Another interview they asked him about whether some football incident (I cannot remember which one) was a "low point" for him. He remarked that it wasn't a low point, a low point was when he had nothing to eat and was worried about how he could get his jeans clean in time so he didn't have to wear wet jeans to school or at least iron them for a bit so at least they would be warm for a little while. It made light of the reporter's assumption of what struggle really was and how he knew just how blessed he was.
Neither answer was the kind that an idiot would make, just because he expresses himself differently does not make me doubt his intelligence at all. And frankly, his assessment that doing interviews was just going to result in more people mocking him or twisting his words makes it clear he is not even close to dumb.