Bill Gates has been forthcoming with his take on the recent shift in US politics, after a three-hour dinner with Donald Trump last month that the tech titan called “engaging.”
Speaking to The Times of London newspaper, Gates confirmed that he’d sat down in December with then-president elect Trump at his Florida home of Mar-a-Lago. Gates recounted:
“On December 27 I had a three-hour dinner with Trump… It was quite an engaging conversation where he listened to me talk about HIV and the need to stay generous and to innovate to get a cure. I talked a lot about polio and energy and nuclear, and he wasn’t dismissive.”
Of his need to work with Trump on his own tireless campaign for funding for vaccines to help eradicate diseases particularly in the developing world, Gates said:
“There is so much up in the air with him — is he going to deport nine million or one million? Is he going to have 60 per cent tariffs or 5 per cent? Is he going to fund infectious disease innovation or end it? I need to stay close. Whoever gets to enthuse President Trump about the right things, that is God’s work.”
Gates sounded less enthused by the prospect of Elon Musk’s continuing interest in the politics of the UK and into Europe and Asia, and his propensity to express his opinions on his social media platform X. Gates called it “really insane that he can destabilise the political situations in countries.”
He expended: “I think in the US foreigners aren’t allowed to give money; other countries maybe should adopt safeguards to make sure super-rich foreigners aren’t distorting their elections. It’s difficult to understand why someone who has a car factory in both China and in Germany, whose rocket business is ultra-dependent on relationships with sovereign nations and who is busy cutting $2 trillion in US government expenses and running five companies, is obsessing about this grooming story in the UK. I’m like, what?
“We can all overreach… If someone is super-smart, and he is, they should think how they can help out. But this is populist stirring.”
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