Bill Gates: I met with Epstein because “he knows a lot of rich people”
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fellowship_(Christian_orga... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family:_The_Secret_Fundame... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(miniseries)
It's confusing to me that we see Bill Gates as a particularly exceptional member of the philanthropic class outside of his extreme wealth. Perhaps the increasing popularity of "Effective Altruism"/Peter Singer's ideas, which align fairly well with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's work. Perhaps it was his ability to avoid scandal.
So now, if I met Epstein one time at MIT, without knowing his crimes, I'm a pedophile too?
What exactly is Gates being accused of here? Just come out and say it? You guys want him to be a pedophile too so you can tear him down? Gates has done so much good for the world.
If Gates is found to have done something wrong, I'll be the first to call him a scumbag.
Till then, stop hating on him.
Unless and until there's evidence that these people were indeed involved in the trafficking and exploitation directly, they haven't done anything wrong. Even the MIT guy was alright in having taken funding from Epstein, where he deserved to lose his job was all the shady stuff he tried to do alongside that.
For example, if you’re a head of state, diplomat, etc., you’re going to take meetings with guys like Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, or their henchmen. That doesn’t mean you approve of the murders they’ve ordered or the people they’ve oppressed. You’re taking the meeting as a means to an end - maybe it’s the best way to get a trade deal done, so that entrepreneurs in the two countries can buy stuff from each other.
Or a closer to home example - say you’re a sales person trying to sell SaaS software to BigCorp. You have an important sales meeting coming up with a BigCorp employee, you do some research and find out that 5 years ago, he solicited an underage prostitute for sex. Do you cancel the meeting? The odd person might, but most would just take the meeting anyways. You wouldn’t become friends with the guy, but you’d still try to sell some software to the business he represents.
If people have close personal ties to Epstein, investigate them. At the very least it’s morally reprehensible, and if they participated in the sex rings/paedophilia, charge them. But taking the odd business meeting with a bad person is not a big deal on its own IMO.
I guess people here, and across the press, are asking questions to figure out if he has done anything wrong. Unless you're suggesting that Bill Gates is above and beyond any questioning, the reports sound fair and justified.
>So now, if I met Epstein one time at MIT, without knowing his crimes, I'm a pedophile too?
Can you show me a single instance of the press accusing Gates of pedophilia? They're just asking why the richest man in the world (at the time) needed a convicted sex offender like Epstein to raise money for philanthropy. Do you think it's an unfair question?
Bill Gates met with him in 2013. Why did Gates decide to meet with a convicted sex offender and pedophile? I think that, for powerful people, "not setting up meetings with sex offenders" is actually a pretty easy and straightforward ethical bar.
Bill Gates is not really typical high society anyways.
The idea Gates was unaware of Epstein's past while arranging million-plus dollar donations with him is adorably naive.
Seems weird and wrong ...
No one's saying that meeting with Epstein was illegal, but I think that most people would avoid schmoozing with convicted pedophile sex offenders. When someone as powerful as Gates meets with someone and helps facilitate donations through them, that supports that person. Why did Gates choose to associate with and support a convicted sex offender and pedophile?
I think these are very very reasonable questions to ask
Do we know Gates was aware of it? If not, do we expect him or his entourage to background check (or at least google) everyone he is going to meet? If yes, then I guess I would want to know as well.
I like the impression of a clueless Bill Gates with 100 Billion dollars in his hand and having lead one of the most powerful businesses of last century, completely unsure of how to get in touch with other rich people. "Gee Jeffrey, do you think you could help me make some more rich friends to help with good deeds?"
I also feel like that sentence was a bit truncated "he knows a lot of rich people... because he runs a sex island where influential people can get and do anything they want."
Epstein had connections to rich and powerful people in tech... And entertainment, and politics, and really all industry.
I think it's just a hard story to keep up with. Too many connections without enough investigation to if those connections are tied to his crimes (yet).
That was my first thought too: Sir Bill Gates is known by just about anyone in the world, certainly all rich people. He doesn't know them, yet, but of all people in the world, I would expect him to be the last to need someone like Epstein to introduce him.
The other issue that one has to wonder is if this process of connecting to other rich people through his foundation is not a side business to the goal of finding investment and personal connections for himself.
>"He never donated any money to anything that I know about.”[...]
>Following the 2013 meeting between the two men, Epstein arranged for a $2 million donation from Gates to the MIT Media Lab, according to a report in The New Yorker. A spokesperson for Gates said in a statement provided to the Journal that “any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grantmaking for Bill Gates is completely false.”
So 5 years after Epstein is officially convicted of soliciting underaged prostitutes Bill Gates pretends as if he doesn't know who Epstein is, and somehow seems clueless of any donations despite having Epstein arrange a 2 million dollar donation, while also being one of the richest and most well connected people on the planet? These people cannot be serious.