Billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates has said her ex-husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, being named in new files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein dredged up “painful times in my marriage”.
She told an NPR podcast she feels “unbelievable sadness” about the Epstein allegations and that the people named in the records, including her former husband, need to answer to it.
“I am so happy to be away from all the muck,” she said. The couple divorced in 2021 after 27 years of marriage.
Records released by the US justice department include an allegation by Epstein that Bill Gates caught a sexually transmitted disease. He has called the claim “absolutely absurd”.
Yes, but he donated a fraction of his fortune to a set of charities chosen to maximize their PR value! That totally absolves him!
Not even purely for PR value. One of his foundation’s causes is providing free medicines to third-world countries – to stave off their saying “fuck patents” and producing the drugs for themselves, thereby helping to erode intellectual property rights.
Fun fact this has always confused me because I would think the best way to maximize PR value would be to just set up a metric fucktonne of charities basically everywhere with a wide breadth of functions. The whole hyper specific charity thing just comes across as weird at best intentionally manipulative at worst, which I guess is the point but it should be harder to tell at first glance y’know?