Bill Gates likewise had a meeting with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Bill Gates speaks at the pledge session of the 2024 World Health Summit on October 14, 2024 in Berlin, Germany. The session raised over USD 1 billion for the World Health Organization (WHO) from a variety of international donors. Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has revealed during an interview that he had a brief meeting with President Donald Trump wherein he defended the work being done by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
USAID became the latest target of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The government has since frozen foreign aid coming from USAID.
The USAID, according to NBC News, has been accused of “wasteful spending.”
During his interview with “TODAY” show anchor Savannah Guthrie, Gates said that “I went by the White House because there’s a lot in this transition, what we keep, in terms of foreign aid, what we keep — it’s all kind of up in the air.”
“And I’m doing my best to make sure we keep the things that I think are very value-based,” he added.
While he described his meeting with Trump as brief, the Microsoft co-founder revealed that he had a longer discussion with Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
“It’s unbelievable what an asset that is,” Gates said of USAID. “I know all the development agencies of all the countries, and this is the best of them.”
Gates is a well-known philanthropist himself. In 2000, he co-launched the Gates Foundation with his then-wife, Melinda French Gates. One of the largest charitable foundations in the world, the Gates Foundation has focused on the areas of education, healthcare, poverty reduction, and more.
“The goal of my philanthropy is to reduce inequity,” Gates said on his official website. “Globally, the worst inequity is in health. More than 4 million children under the age of five die every year, nearly all of them in poor countries.”
“Climate change is increasingly a source of inequity because extreme weather is hardest on the world’s poorest people,” he added. “In the United States, the worst inequity is in education. So these are the primary issues where I fund research, policy work, and other activities.”