Bill Gates has revealed he had a lengthy dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where the pair discussed global health.
The Microsoft co-founder, 69, told The Independent he met with President-elect Trump at his Florida residence shortly after Christmas to discuss the work his Gates Foundation is doing to prevent the spread of HIV and polio, and to urge Trump to continue U.S. funding for research in those areas.
Given that Elon Musk has frequently been sighted at Mar-a-Lago since spending $250 million to back Trump’s successful presidential campaign, Gates observed that he thought the Tesla and SpaceX CEO might also be in attendance.
“When I went down to see Trump, I wondered if Elon would be there but it ended up being a meeting with just Trump and I and our two staff people,” said Gates, whose forthcoming memoir Source Code will be published next month.
In a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gates said he was “impressed” with Trump’s interest in global health issues during their “long and actually quite intriguing dinner.”
He said they discussed the possibility of developing a cure for HIV, with Gates adding: “He, in the Covid days, accelerated the vaccine innovation. So I was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here, and we both got, I think, pretty excited about that.”
Gates also said he urged Trump to continue efforts to combat polio around the world.
“I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation,” Gates told the Journal. “I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.”
Many influential business leaders have been attempting to catch Trump’s ear before he returns to office. It was revealed earlier Friday that Musk is set to speak at Trump’s pre-inauguration rally in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, alongside Hulk Hogan and Dana White.
He is also expected to attend Monday’s inauguration, with fellow tech billionaires including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
All three have been trying to get into Trump’s good graces. Musk donated hundreds of millions to Trump’s re-election effort, while Zuckerberg made changes this month to his lobbying staff and content moderation policies to more closely align his company with the second Trump administration. Meta then donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has also rolled back its program on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI. This comes after its decision to remove its third-party fact-checking program and roll back hate speech and abuse policies.
Meanwhile, Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, put a stop to an expected endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris by the paper’s editorial board, deciding the paper wouldn’t make an endorsement for the first time in 36 years. Similar to Meta, Amazon also donated $1 million to the inaugural fund.
