‘I was frankly impressed’: Bill Gates dishes on 3-hour dinner with ‘energized’ Trump

Billionaire Bill Gates revealed this week that he was very “impressed” with President-elect Donald Trump after sitting with him, his chief of staff, and a third person for a recent three-hour meeting.

Gates revealed this to Emma Tucker of The Wall Street Journal, telling her that he had “a long and actually quite intriguing dinner with him.”

When asked to explain what he found intriguing, Gates cited a discussion all four of them had.

Listen:

“So the four of us sat there and it was quite wide-ranging,” he said. “You know, global health is the area that I work in and such amazing things have happened and can happen there. I spoke a lot about HIV and that the foundation’s literally working on a cure for that. We’re at an early stage. And so, you know, [Trump] in the COVID days accelerated the vaccine innovation. So I, you know, was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here. And we both got, I think, pretty excited about that.”

“We talked about polio where, you know, we’re very close to getting that done. But if you stop, it’ll spread back. And so I explained why it’s been tough in Pakistan, Afghanistan. We’ve had cases show up in Gaza. We have cases in Africa. And he was fascinated to hear what he could do to maximize the chance that during the next four years, that incredible milestone will be achieved. I felt like he was, you know, energized and – you know – looking forward to helping to drive innovation. You know, I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up,” Gates added.

Word of the dinner first emerged in late December, when Trump published a Truth Social post revealing that Gates had “asked to come” to his Mar-a-Lago estate.

As for Trump supporters, their response to the dinner has been divided. Some celebrated the fact that billionaires like Gates, among others, have all begun bending the knee to Trump.

In recent days, a slew of other powerful business figures — including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg — have traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump.

Furthermore, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew all intend to attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday.

“This rallying of tech heavyweights around the incoming president, even in the face of his right-wing base, only reaffirms what Trump has been saying over and over again: Everybody does want to be his friend,” The New Republic, a left-wing outlet, notes.

However, many other Trump supporters responded to the dinner by sharing their concerns about Gates, a man many of them consider to be an anti-Trump snake.

“Bill Gates is part of the blob that tried to kill the MAGA movement for years,” conservative activist Robby Starbuck posted. “He wanted to destroy Trump. People like him should receive less than zero favors. Letting Gates accelerate any kind of treatment is a recipe for disaster. Accelerate the Epstein list release instead!”

“I’m not excited to hear Bill Gates and Trump are discussing global health,” the TaraBull account tweeted. “Please keep him far away from this administration.”

See more responses below:

In fairness to the critics, Gates did donate over $50 million to Vice President Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign.

Vivek Saxena

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