President Donald Trump made “scary” observations about the appearance of Bill Gates’ daughter and asked if HPV and HIV were the same thing, the billionaire philanthropist said in video footage obtained by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
The Microsoft founder was recorded addressing staff at a recent meeting of his charitable Gates Foundation where he talked about meeting Trump.
In the video, which aired Thursday night on "All In With Chris Hayes," Gates explained that he had never met the president before the election but that his 22-year-old daughter had previously encountered him at an event in Florida.
“There was a thing where he and I were at the same place before the election and I avoided him,” Gates told his co-workers. “Then he got elected. So then I went to see him in December.
"He knew my daughter, Jennifer, because Trump has this horse show thing down in Florida. He went up and talked to Jen and was being super nice. And then around 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place. So clearly he had been driven away and he wanted to make a grand entrance on a helicopter.
“Anyway, so when I first talked to him it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter's appearance. [Gates’ wife] Melinda did not like that too well.”
Gates then described two meetings in Trump Tower in which he urged the president to become a leader in science and innovation, perhaps by accelerating progress toward an HIV vaccine.
“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,” Gates said. “And somebody, Robert Kennedy Jr., was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things and I said, ‘No, that is a dead end, that would be a bad thing, do not do that.’”
There were laughs and groans from the audience after Gates added: “Both times he wanted to know the difference between HIV and HPV and so I was able to explain that those are things that are rarely confused with each other.”
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection — affecting 79 million Americans, most in their late teens and early 20s —and can cause health problems including cancers. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) weakens the immune system destroying important cells that fight disease and infection and can lead to AIDS. There are vaccines for HPV but no known cure for HIV.
Gates also revealed that Trump spoke about himself in the third person.
He's an f-ing moron. But you knew that.
I'm sure this will be seen as more elite snobbery. But Trump is an elite himself, born into money, educated at elite schools, lived in a golden tower all of which he bragged about incessantly. He is fair game for someone like Gates, who actually did make his own fortune.
At least Gates was able to talk him out of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories.
