Bill Gates has condemned Elon Musk for cuts to humanitarian organizations carried out by his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told The Financial Times in a recent interview.
DOGE dismantled most of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in February, with Musk boasting online that he fed it “into the woodchipper.” He called it a “criminal organization” and said it was “time for it to die.” President Trump argued that the “concept” of USAID is “good” but claims it was run by “radical left lunatics.”
(Credit: SAUL LOEB / Contributor / AFP via Getty Images)
USAID administered about $70 billion of humanitarian aid programs around the world through some 10,000 employees, according to the BBC. That included food security programs to fight famine and administering vaccines, among other programs.
Gates says Musk does not understand some of the funding he cut. He pointed to grants for a hospital in Mozambique that prevented women from transmitting HIV to their babies. DOGE thought the program was supplying condoms to Hamas in Gaza because the hospital in Mozambique was located in the Gaza Province.
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“I’d love for [Musk] to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Gates says.
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The Microsoft co-founder also called out abruptness of the DOGE cuts, which caused life-saving food and medicines to expire in warehouses, and could cause the resurgence of diseases such as measles and polio. Gates told the Trump administration in March that no private funding, or organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, could reasonably replace the funding, Fortune reports. In another interview this week with The New York Times, Gates predicted that childhood mortality will go up during the Trump administration by a million per year.
Musk responded on X, saying “Gates is a huge liar.”
He also took a jab at Gates in a February post where he claimed his conversations with him have “been underwhelming [to be honest].”
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Gates is taking a harsher tone toward Musk than he did at the start of the Trump administration. In a January interview with The Wall Street Journal, he was cautiously optimistic about DOGE, which hadn’t yet started making aggressive cuts. He agreed that taking a look at government spending “could be a valuable thing” and that “the deficit needs to be brought down or else it’ll create a financial problem for us.” However, Gates said he “worried a little bit” about getting rid of critical programs like “HIV medicines where the US is keeping tens of millions of people alive.”
Gates has worked first hand with these issues through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has similar goals to “fight poverty, disease, and inequity around the world,” according to its website. Though a billionaire himself, he has committed to giving away his fortune before he dies through what’s known as The Giving Pledge. Musk also signed it.
Gates plans to dismantle his foundation by 2045. It has already dispersed $100 billion and estimates it can dish out another $200 billion over the next 20 years, including from its endowment and Gates’ future personal donations, NBC News reports.
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