President Donald Trump supposedly knew a "scary" amount about Bill Gates's daughter's appearance, according to the billionaire, who was describing a meeting he had with then President-Elect Trump after the 2016 election.
In a video obtained by MSNBC, Gates can be seen talking to the Gates Foundation about the strange encounter with Trump. Gates said that Trump already knew his daughter Jennifer because she participated in horse shows in Florida, in which Trump was involved.
"He knew my daughter Jennifer because Trump has this horse show thing down in Florida. So he went up and talked to Jen and was being super nice."
The niceties, however, were short-lived. Gates recalled that Trump appeared to have performed a stunt, possibly to impress his daughter, by leaving the event and then flying back in by helicopter 20 minutes later.
"And then about 20 minutes later he flew in in a helicopter to the same place. So he clearly had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in a helicopter."
It was at this point, Gates explained, that Trump began talking about Jennifer's appearance to Gates and his wife, Melinda. This made the Gates parents really uncomfortable, the software mogul said. What Trump said specifically, however, was not mentioned.
"When I first talked to him it was actually kind of scary how much he knew about my daughter's appearance...Melinda didn't like that too well."
Following that segment, Gates detailed how in another meeting, Trump asked him to explain why "vaccines weren't a bad thing." Gates said that Trump wanted to create a committee to study the "ill effects of vaccines," something which is wildly debunked among scientists.
"He asked me if vaccines weren't a bad thing, because was considering a commission to look into ill effects of vaccines... I said, 'no, that would be a dead end, that would be a bad thing, don't do that.'"
Gates then claimed that Trump wanted to know if there was a different between HIV and HPV, the virus that causes genital warts.
"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."
Gates also recalled the way Trump presented himself during their meetings, which took place shortly after Trump took office, which involved the president referring to himself in the third person.
"When I walked in, his first sentence kinda threw me off. He said, 'Trump hears that you don't like what Trump is doing.' And I thought, 'wow, but you're Trump!'"
The strange encounters alleged by Gates generated some equally fierce slap backs on Twitter.
@jman42/Bluesky
@SecretaryBurgum/X
@Doug Ellin/X
@evanrachelwood/Instagram