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Bill Gates says he was creeped out by how much Donald Trump knew about his daughter’s looks

The Microsoft billionaire also had the explain the difference between HIV and HPV... twice

Bill Gates says he was creeped out by how much Donald Trump knew about his daughter’s looks
18 May 2018

One of the most important criticisms of Donald Trump is his alleged mistreatment of women. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a number of women came forward alleging abuse - and the president has a public history of commenting on and denigrating women’s looks, like when he commented on a female US TV host’s “bleeding face lift”.

Now Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has revealed that he was creeped out by how much the president knew about his daughter’s appearance at a horse show in Florida.

The remarks were recorded at a recent Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting, where the tech guru took questions from staff, according to MSNBC’s All in with Chris Hayes, which broadcast the footage yesterday.

Gates talked about how Trump had met his daughter Jennifer, now 22, at the horse show.

“And then about 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place,” Gates said. “So clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter.”

Gates, who met Trump for the first time in New York in December 2016, added: “So when I first talked to him it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter’s appearance. Melinda [Gates’s wife] didn’t like that too well.”

Although creepy, Trump’s comments certainly fit into his behaviour of critiquing women, including his own daughter.

Gates also revealed that in another meeting in March last year in the White House he had to explain to Trump, who was considering an anti-vaccine commission, the difference between HIV and HPV.


Read more: Donald Trump offered Bill Gates a job and was brutally shut down in just 8 words


Gates said: “In both of those two meetings, he asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing because he was considering a commission to look into ill-effects of vaccines and somebody – I think it was Robert Kennedy Jr – was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things. And I said no, that’s a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don’t do that.

“Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between HIV and HPV so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other.”

According to the NHS, human papilloma virus (HPV) is the name for a group of viruses that affect your skin and the moist membranes lining your body. Genital HPV infections are common and highly contagious. They are spread during sexual intercourse and skin-to-skin contact of the genital areas.

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), meanwhile, is a virus that damages the cells in your immune system and weakens your ability to fight everyday infections and disease. The most common way of getting HIV in the UK is through having anal or vaginal sex without a condom.

What’s fascinating about these clips, though, is the audience reaction: they laugh. When you really think about it: shouldn’t we be crying instead of laughing? This is actually horrifying. 

(Image: Getty)