Bill Gates Shares His Memories of Donald Trump (cnn.com)

MSNBC recently published a video of Bill Gates telling his staff at the Gates Foundation that he had two meetings with Donald Trump since the president was elected. In the video, Gates says Trump doesn't know the difference between two sexually transmitted diseases -- human papillomavirus (HPV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) -- and that it was "scary" how much Trump knew about Gates' daughter's appearance. Gates also said he urged Trump to support innovation and technology during those meetings. CNN reports: Taking audience questions about his interactions with Trump at a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation meeting, the former Microsoft honcho said he first met Trump in December 2016. He told the audience that Trump had previously come across his daughter, Jennifer, at a horse show in Florida. "And then about 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place," Gates said, according to video of the event broadcast by MSNBC late Thursday. "So clearly he had been driven away but he wanted to make a grand entrance in 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. Melinda (Gates' wife) didn't like that too well."

Gates also said he discussed science with Trump on two separate occasions, where he says the President questioned him on the difference between HIV and HPV. "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," Gates said.

Comments

The worst amongst us.

[RyanFenton]

We are currently ruled by some of the worst people of our nation.

Why? Because of joy.

"What? Joy?" You may ask. Yes - joy, the emotion of joy - that little element of discovering something that pleases you.

Americans discovered that amongst the boring moments of their lives, and amidst the confusing cycles of our politics, the thing that brought them the most joy, was the crude, often cruel mockery of difference.

It's not quite comedy, in the professional sense - even the most crude professional comedians would find this kind of humor career destroying. See Kathy Griffin to see what happens when one wonders into that territory.

But the conservative movement doesn't really have comedians - instead, they have a unique brand of cruelty that takes the place of open comedy.

It's not always about laughing - it's about joy, the joy of knowing how you are treating your enemy, the joy of cruelty, of punishing difference. At all levels, from online sharing, to the highest offices.

This isn't new - there were large amounts of this spread across newspapers in the era of 'yellow journalism' - it's actually kind of shocking to read some of the stuff around the civil war. And we're kind of returning to that state of political cruelty - cruelty ahead of everything else.

And that's what Trump represents more than anything else - cruelty in place of political strategy, cruelty in the guise of comedy, cruelty as the dominant force in a major political party. And cruelty called common sense and wisdom in our popular culture.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Challenge accepted

[Anonymous Coward]

> ISIS - No longer a major threat.

This is the closest thing you're correct on. And it was done by mostly a continuation of the military strategies implemented under the Obama administration. Thanks Obama!

> US economy - Heading back in the right direction.

Thanks Obama!

> N. Korea - Coming to the negotiating table.

Thanks China and South Korea. You know, if it actually happens and they aren't playing games just like *every other time this has happened in the last 50 years*.