Reuters/Nic Bothma
Melinda French Gates has some thoughts on Silicon Valley’s rightward turn.
“What I have seen in the last six months to a year is many people who used to say one thing, have absolutely shifted,” the billionaire philanthropist said in an interview with Bloomberg published this week.
French Gates also suggested that the tech billionaires who lined up behind President Donald Trump at his second inauguration weren’t following their own values.
“Look, a democracy is made up by our beliefs and our investments and our values, and we, of all times right now, should be living those values out, not pivoting to what some comms person tells us is the right thing to do,” she said.
It’s not the first time French Gates has criticized tech billionaires in recent months.
In May, she said that Elon Musk — then the de facto head of the White House DOGE Office — should “go out and actually see what’s going on in the world today” before shuttering the US Agency for International Development, or USAID.
The billionaire philanthropist supported Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election and has committed $1 billion to supporting women’s issues and reproductive rights.
“I really want to make sure that women can step into their full power and advance in society in both the US and globally,” French Gates later said in the Bloomberg interview. “For a woman to have her full power, she needs to be able to voice what she thinks is true, make her own decisions about herself and her family, and have her own resources that she can decide where and how to spend them.”
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