Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates met with President Trump Thursday. The meeting was closed to the media, but Gates told POLITICO a focus would be on foreign aid, which currently accounts for less than one percent of the U.S. budget.
“I don’t agree with the 'America First' rhetoric that is,” Gates told POLITICO Playbook reporters Thursday.
“We’ve made the world a more stable, a richer place, and I think that’s good just from a pure humanitarian point of view. I do think that because our foreign aid budget is so small, we pick things that are so effective,” he continued.
Gates, whose foundation has spent billions of dollars on global health, also said he would urge the President to invest in preparedness against the potential for the spread of infectious disease. In recent interviews, he’s said he believes a pandemic is the greatest immediate threat to humanity.
During his question and answer session Thursday, he also stressed the importance of the private sector working with the government, benefiting from public funding, to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.
“If I had a wand, I’d mostly wave it to say create a magic, clean energy source that’s very cheap. Or, to take the work we’re doing on malnutrition, which is a great problem, and say let’s understand and get rid of malnutrition,” Gates told POLITICO.
When asked about this week’s shakeup at the State Department and the departure of Rex Tillerson, he said: “if the hiring of good people and morale at the state department can be improved under new leadership, that would be a good thing.”
A spokesperson for the Gates Foundation has not yet responded to KING 5’s request for a statement following Thursday’s meeting at the White House.
In the Gates’ annual letter earlier this year, they discussed the relationship between presidential administrations and their foundation’s work.
“Although we disagree with this administration more than the others we’ve met with, we believe it's still important to work together whenever possible,” Gates said of the Trump administration. “We keep talking to them because if the U.S. cuts back on its investments abroad, people in other countries will die, and Americans will be worse off.”
