Bill Gates didn’t hold back when talking about Elon Musk. He blamed Musk for hurting kids around the world, and he wasn’t being vague about it.
Things in the U.S. have changed fast since Trump got sworn in this January. One big move? He picked Elon Musk to run the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut government spending.
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Gates, also a billionaire, is not a fan of how Musk is doing the job.
Gates slams Musk for running DOGE and cutting aid
Gates doesn’t like Musk’s cost-cutting moves under DOGE one bit. In fact, he accused him of “killing the world’s poorest children.”
Musk cuts USAID calling it a ‘criminal organization’
DOGE started shutting down all kinds of government departments. A big target was foreign aid, especially USAID.
Musk had called it a “criminal organization” back in February and said “it was time for it to die.”
USAID was the world’s largest donor of humanitarian aid
USAID had close to 10,000 employees and was known as the world’s biggest single provider of humanitarian help.
In 2023 alone, it spent more than $40 million on global aid.
Musk says the whole system was ‘a ball of worms’
But Musk didn’t see it that way. He thought USAID was just a giant money pit, so he shut it down.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm in it,” Musk said at the time. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing.”
Gates says Musk’s cuts are dangerous and misguided
This is the part that really set Gates off. He said the cuts to international development programs were a big mistake.
“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” he told the Financial Times.
Life-saving aid is expiring while diseases surge
According to Gates, the cuts have caused serious problems, with medicine and food going to waste in warehouses.
Meanwhile, countries that were depending on that aid are now seeing more cases of measles, HIV, polio, and all kinds of preventable diseases.
Gaza hospital funding was pulled over a false claim
Gates also pointed out that Musk shut down funding for a hospital in Gaza that helped prevent HIV in newborn babies.
But Musk claimed the U.S. was giving condoms to Hamas, which wasn’t true.
“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.
The feud between Musk and Gates goes back years
This isn’t the first time the two billionaires have butted heads.
Way back in 2012, Musk signed the Giving Pledge, which was all about promising to give away at least half of his wealth.
But when Gates brought it up, Musk told him the pledge was “bulls**.”
Gates plans to give away $200 billion by 2045
Now Gates has plans of his own. He’s aiming to give away almost all his money by 2045. He’ll shut down the Gates Foundation for good.
He’s planning to spend $200 billion on global health, education, and development. Vaccines, child health, HIV — he wants to tackle all of that.
He says his fortune won’t cover the damage done
Still, Gates admits his donations aren’t going to fix everything or fill the gap left by Musk’s cuts. Just last year, USAID alone lost $44 billion in funding.
Even so, in a letter explaining his plans, Gates wrote: “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. There are too many urgent problems to solve.”