Billionaire Bill Gates revealed he recently had an “intriguing” three-hour dinner with President-elect Donald Trump — and he was left “frankly impressed” by their sit-down.
“I had a chance, about two weeks ago, to go have a long and actually quite intriguing dinner with him,” Gates told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday.
The Microsoft co-founder, 69, said much of their “wide-ranging” dinner table chat focused on global health challenges.
“I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation,” the tech titan said of Trump, 78. “I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.”
They were joined by incoming White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and one of Gates’ staffers.
“The four of us sat there, and it was quite wide-ranging,” Gates said of the dinner.
“I spoke a lot about HIV and that [The Gates] Foundation is literally working on a cure for that. We’re at an early stage, and so he in the COVID days, accelerated the vaccine innovation,” he said.
“So I was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here. And we both got, I think, pretty excited about that,” Gates told WSJ’s Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker.
“We talked about polio where we’re very close to getting that done, but if you stop, it’ll spread back,” he continued.
“And he was fascinated to hear what he could do to maximize the chance that during the next four years that incredible milestone will be achieved.”
Details of the dinner emerged just weeks after Trump made a cryptic post on Truth Social saying that Gates had asked to come to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Some speculated, at the time, that Trump’s message was meant for fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk’s eyes only.
“Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT,” the incoming president wrote.
At the time, Gates’ team didn’t respond when asked whether he had requested a sit-down with the soon-to-be 47th president.
It wasn’t immediately clear exactly where, or when, the Gates-Trump dinner took place.
Gates, who also met with Trump back in 2016 ahead of his first presidential term, is the latest billionaire to dine with him in the wake of his historic 2024 election win.
Other top business leaders — including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — recently traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the next commander in chief in the lead-up to his Jan. 20 inauguration.
