Bill Gates has labelled Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians and attempt to interfere in the politics of other countries – including the UK – as “insane shit”.
Musk has in recent weeks launched a series of unfounded smears at British politicians for supposedly covering up a rape scandal over a decade ago. The UK is currently preparing a new online safety law that would restrict some of Musk’s businesses, including the social media site X.
Musk – the boss of the electric carmaker Tesla and aerospace firm SpaceX – also gave a Nazi-style salute at a recent rally, and responded to the immediate global condemnation he received by posting a series of puns on the word “Nazi” and related terms. Monday was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
Gates also lambasted Musk for embracing not just rightwing politicians but even more extreme ones to the far right, including celebrating the British anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson over the rightwing Reform party leader and Brexit champion Nigel Farage.
Musk has also come out in full-throated support of the far-right, anti-immigrant, nativist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
“You want to promote the right wing but say Nigel Farage is not rightwing enough,” Gates told the Sunday Times. “I mean, this is insane shit. You are for the AfD …
“If someone is super-smart, and he is, they should think how they can help out. But this is populist stirring.”
Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, said that his fellow multibillionaire tech titan was guilty of “overreach”.
“It’s really insane that he can destabilise the political situations in countries,” Gates said. “I think in the US foreigners aren’t allowed to give money; other countries maybe should adopt safeguards to make sure super-rich foreigners aren’t distorting their elections.
“It’s difficult to understand why someone who has a car factory in both China and in Germany, whose rocket business is ultra-dependent on relationships with sovereign nations and who is busy cutting $2 trillion in US government expenses and running five companies, is obsessing about this grooming story in the UK. I’m like, what?”
Gates donated $50m to the campaign of Kamala Harris before she lost to Donald Trump in November’s US presidential election and has given away nearly $60bn through the Gates Foundation (including support for the Guardian’s Global Development site). Most of the donated Gates Foundation money was meant to help eradicate diseases such as polio, malaria and HIV – yet he was the subject of a backlash from US Republicans after helping fund vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Robert Kennedy Jr called me a child killer trying to make billions of dollars,” he said, of the vaccine skeptic who Trump has picked for his health secretary. “You have to have a sense of humour. The world is not logical now and you have to accept that you might be treated as the Antichrist for trying to help.”
Nevertheless, Gates visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on 27 December for a three-hour dinner. “It was quite an engaging conversation where he listened to me talk about HIV and the need to stay generous and to innovate to get a cure,” Gates said. “I talked a lot about polio and energy and nuclear, and he wasn’t dismissive.
“In some ways he is feeling more comfortable and vindicated than at any time in his life, so he is confident,” Gates said, explaining that he did not feel any reluctance to visit the populist rightwing president. “Well, he is the most powerful person in the world and his decision over whether to consider changing HIV funding alone would make the trip worth it, or to encourage Pakistan and Afghanistan to take polio eradication seriously.”
Gates added that he met Trump more frequently during his first term as president than he did Joe Biden during his Oval Office tenure. He said: “I had a lot of times when I would go to the White House and they would say, ‘We think you are going to see President Biden today,’ but six times in a row it didn’t happen,” adding that he was instead invited to meet the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, or other staff.
Trump, Gates said, “has a lot of ability to help me … Is he going to fund infectious disease innovation or end it? I need to stay close. Whoever gets to enthuse President Trump about the right things, that is God’s work.”
English (US)