Melinda French Gates Reveals Whether She Would Meet with Trump Now – ryan
Melinda French Gates has strong feelings about President Donald Trump.
In a recent interview with The Sunday Timesthe 60-year-old philanthropist, who is currently promoting her new book The Next Day, was asked about Trump — and whether she would be willing to meet with him again, like she did during his first term.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to right now,” French Gates, who has committed billions to help women and girls, told the outlet.
“I meet with people where I feel like we can make progress on issues,” she added.
French Gates said that she did meet with Trump during his first term in order to “try and keep the US funding up for contraceptives, because they make such a difference in women’s lives.” As for the result of that conversation, French Gates took a lengthy pause before answering, “I didn’t get anywhere. We’ll just say that.”
French Gates also took aim at the Trump administration’s sudden cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development. (PEOPLE previously reported that USAID workers have been reduced from over 10,000 to 290, according to a former senior official for the organization.)
“I do think leadership matters. You look at the leaders who are in place right now and it’s devastating, but it’s not a surprise,” she said.
“Look at USAID,” French Gates added. “Republican and Democratic administrations had supported it. Now we have an administration, because of their values and the hubris, we will have 17 million women next year who do not have access to maternal mortality services.”
French Gates’ ex-husband Bill Gates has met with Trump after the 2025 presidential election, previously telling The Wall Street Journal that they had a three-hour-long dinner.
The Microsoft co-founder, who reportedly donated $50 million to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and did not attend Trump’s inauguration, said he was “impressed” by Trump’s interests and called their conversation “quite wide-ranging.”
The following month, Gates told Today‘s Savannah Guthrie that he met with Trump again in order to advocate for USAID. “I’m doing my best to make sure we keep the things that I think are very value-based.”
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In a recent cover story, French Gates opened up to PEOPLE about her commitment to philanthropy through Pivotal Ventureswhich she founded in 2015.
“The organizations we support have removed so many barriers holding back women and families,” she says. “They’re making caregivers’ lives easier. They’re helping young people find mental health services that work for them. They’re getting more women into positions of power.”
In her new book, she also wrote about the impact the changing political climate had on her decision to leave the Gates Foundation, which she founded with her ex-husband.
“I am simply not willing to accept the idea that my granddaughters could grow up with less freedom than I had,” she wrote. “And I knew that by leaving the foundation, I would have more time and resources to devote to this fight–as well as, for the first time in my philanthropic career, full control over how those resources were used.”