By Molly Goddard
7:40am PST, Feb 5, 2025
When the journalist, 53, pressed Gates on his comments calling Musk's political involvement "insane s—," he gave quite a diplomatic answer. "Well, I admire the great private sector stuff he's done — you know, SpaceX, Tesla, both amazing companies," the computer programmer stated.
"I think in the case of USAID, he doesn't appreciate the phenomenal work that goes on. It's not
partisan work," Gates made clear.
Guthrie pointed out how the X founder claimed the agency was "beyond repair." However, Gates noted how he's had a front-row seat to what the entity does.
"I give
billions of dollars to the same thing that USAID does," he explained. "I go out in the field and study these things. I hire scientists and so I think if he really knew the work there, he wouldn't be telling 10,000 people to not come and do that work."
Despite being left-leaning, Gates traveled to Palm Beach, Fla., to speak with Trump, 78, over his philanthropic endeavors through the Gates Foundation.
"The Gates Foundation works on saving lives and the
U.S. government has been an incredible partner, buying HIV medicine to keep tens of millions of people alive. And there's so much innovation that can be done, you know, a vaccine for HIV," the co-founder of the nonprofit said.
"So, I went to see President Trump to say, 'Look, we both believe in saving lives. What can we do to accelerate innovation?'" he revealed. "With the
COVID vaccine, he did accelerate the availability of that."
During Gates' first-ever appearance on
The View, he further explained his feelings about the three-hour chat with the right-wing leader. "I felt we had a very good conversation," he confirmed.
The women on the panel posed the same question he faced earlier about Musk. "A lot of private sector people, when they get into government, they don't take the time necessarily to see what the good work is or why it's structured the way it is," Gates pointed out. "So, I'm a little worried, particularly with this USAID stuff."
The X Corp owner recently held a live session on X Spaces, previously known as Twitter Spaces, where he alleged Trump approved him to "
shut down" the USAID. "It became apparent that it's not an apple with a worm in it," he said. "What we have is just a ball of worms. You've got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It's beyond repair. We're shutting it down."
