Bill Gates accuses Elon Musk of killing poor children by cutting foreign aid and says he's giving away his wealth
"Gates also announced that his Gates Foundation will cease operations in 2045, sooner than previously planned.
Bill Gates accused Elon Musk of killing poor children as he announced Thursday that he would donate his remaining fortune to his charity, the Gates Foundation.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, Gates addressed Musk's recent cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal agency responsible for distributing foreign aid around the world. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, effectively shut down the agency in February.
Gates, 69, criticized the shuttering of the agency, accusing Musk of risking a resurgence of diseases such as measles, HIV and polio.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he told the Financial Times.
“I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Gates said of Musk.
A representative for Musk did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Last week, Musk announced that he would be stepping back from his role at DOGE after Tesla, one of his several companies, reported a sizable drop in first-quarter profit and revenue.
"Elon Musk is a patriot working to fulfill President Trump’s mission to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse," Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for DOGE, said in a statement. "Backbenchers should celebrate the selfless efforts of America’s most innovative entrepreneur, who is dedicating time to support American taxpayers and hold Washington accountable to the people of this great nation.”
Gates, who co-founded Microsoft, also announced that he would give up his remaining wealth to his nonprofit foundation over the next two decades in the FT interview, an interview published in The New York Times and a lengthy blog post on the Gate Foundation’s website, all published on Thursday, the nonprofit's 25th anniversary.
The billionaire philanthropist also said that the foundation would be ceasing operations on Dec. 31, 2045, sooner than originally projected.
"People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that 'he died rich' will not be one of them," Gates wrote in the blog post. "There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people."
"That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned," he added.
In February, Gates met with President Donald Trump at the White House to advocate for continuing foreign aid disbursements from USAID. In an interview with NBC’s “TODAY” show shortly after the White House meeting, Gates warned that replicating USAID's work would be difficult.
"Getting those people out there in their depth of experience, that’s an asset that would be very hard to re-create," he said.
Gates said in his blog post that since he and his former wife, Melinda Gates, started the foundation in 2000, it has donated more than $100 billion. He said he expects it will donate another $200 billion over the next 20 years, including from its endowment and Gates' future personal donations.
Gates has a personal fortune of $168 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires' Index, which ranks him as the fifth-wealthiest person in the world.
"The Gates Foundation’s mission remains rooted in the idea that where you are born should not determine your opportunities," Gates wrote. "I am excited to see how our next chapter continues to move the world closer to a future where everyone everywhere has the chance to live a healthy and productive life."
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