Exclusive: Bill Gates pleads with Marco Rubio to rescind cuts to USAID

Sources: Trump 'sad' about Musk, thought he was 'real friend'

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Amid the missiles launched between President Trump and Elon Musk on Friday, Bill Gates quietly dropped into Washington without making a sound. In fact, I’m surprised to be the first to report that Gates visited the White House on Friday and pleaded with Secretary of State Marco Rubio to reverse DOGE cuts to foreign aid.

Of the $9.5 billion in DOGE cuts that will actually be codified into law, $8.3 billion of it was for funding the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) foreign aid. Within the USAID, programs for Africa like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which battles mortality rates against a nearly curable disease, will end. Gates announced last week that his foundation plans to donate $200 billion over the next 20 years with a focus on Africa.

With Musk on the outs, Gates clearly saw an opportunity to argue for the reversal of the DOGE cuts. He said that he fears that without USAID polio, measles, and AIDS will spread.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times last month.

“I’d love for him to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Gates said of Musk.

I’m told that Rubio informed Gates