Bill Gates Shares Details of His Private Three-Hour Dinner With Trump: ‘I Was Frankly Impressed’

Bill Gates told The Wall Street Journal he was “impressed” after a recent three-hour meeting with President-elect Donald Trump in a short clip the paper released Friday.

The billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder said he sat with Trump and incoming White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles where the topic of infectious disease was discussed.

The Journal released a preview of its sitdown with Gates and teased the rest of the interview would be released next week after Trump’s inauguration.

In a short clip, the paper’s Editor in Chief Emma Tucker asked Gates if he had met with Trump. He replied, “Yeah, I had a chance to go have a long and actually quite intriguing dinner with him.”

When he was pressed to expound on what had intrigued him, Gates said he, Trump, Wiles, and one of his closest confidantes had a discussion that made an impression on him:

So the four of us sat there and it was quite wide-ranging. You know, global health is the area that I work in and such amazing things have happened and can happen there. I spoke a lot about HIV and that the foundation’s literally working on a cure for that. We’re at an early stage. And so, you know, he in the Covid days accelerated the vaccine innovation. So I, you know, was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here. And we both got, I think, pretty excited about that.

We talked about polio where, you know, we’re very close to getting that done. But if you if you stop, it’ll spread back. And so I explained why it’s been tough in Pakistan, Afghanistan. We’ve had cases show up in Gaza. We have cases in Africa. 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. I felt like he was, you know, energized and – you know – looking forward to helping to drive innovation. You know, I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.

Watch above via The Wall Street Journal.