Melinda French Gates said Department of Government Efficiency Chair Elon Musk should broaden his horizons a bit before making cuts to U.S. foreign aid.
"I would say, before you move on an action, go out and actually see what's going on in the world today," French Gates said, addressing Musk, in an interview published Thursday in Fortune. "Go travel. Then decide what you're going to do."
"Yes, people in our own country are hurting," she added. "We need to do things about that. But people are really hurting around the world, and I don't think we want more poverty and more disease when we have a program that's working."
Musk set his sights on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January and authorized the tech billionaire to take a figurative chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy with a vengeance.
"We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper," Musk wrote in a post on X on Feb. 3 when USAID shut down its headquarters. "Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead."
The next day, USAID said almost all of its staff would be put on administrative leave on Feb. 7. Then in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83% of USAID's programs would be shut down, with the State Department absorbing the agency's remnants.
This isn't the first time French Gates has publicly disagreed with Musk, who has previously criticized her philanthropic efforts.
After French Gates endorsed President Joe Biden's reelection campaign last June, Musk wrote on his social media platform X that it "might be the downfall of Western civilization." The tech mogul had been responding to a post by conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair about having "the scorned billionaire wife to Democrat activist pipeline … studied."
In a separate post, St. Clair wrote, "Many super villain arcs being pursued under the guise of philanthropy."
"Yeah," Musk replied.
In July, French Gates told The New York Times she thought Musk's criticism of her political activism was "silly," and said she didn't understand why tech CEOs liked to comment on subjects they were not well versed in.
"I mean, here's one thing that always has confounded me about society: I've just watched over the years tech leaders interviewed about their parenting style, a male who has spent, you know, 60 hours at his company that week, and I'm sure he's a fantastic CEO. and has done a great job — maybe or maybe not — in their company," French Gates said.
"But then they get asked about parenting, and they spew all this stuff, and you think, something doesn't add up here," she said. "So I just — some of these comments to me are just kind of silly."
French Gates co-founded the Gates Foundation in 2000 with her then-husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The couple had been married 27 years when they divorced in 2021.
In May 2024, French Gates announced she was leaving the Gates Foundation. Her investment and incubation company Pivotal Ventures reportedly now leads the bulk of her charity work.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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