Bill Gates says Elon Musk ‘involved in deaths of world’s poorest children’ thanks to USAID cuts

Bill Gates escalated his ongoing feud with Elon Musk, telling The New York Times in a new interview that the Tesla chief is effectively killing kids with the “stunning” budgetary cuts being made by his Department of Government Efficiency.

“He’s the one who cut the U.S.A.I.D. budget,” Gates told the Times. “He put it in the wood chipper, because he didn’t go to a party that weekend. … The world’s richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world’s poorest children.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides foreign aid and development assistance to countries around the world, was mostly shuttered by DOGE as part of its work with the Trump administration.

Gates called the people doing the cutting “geographically illiterate.”

The Microsoft co-founder’s comments came on the day that he announced plans to give away $200 billion — nearly all of his wealth — over the next two decades through the Gates Foundation, the Seattle-based global health organization that will sunset its operations on Dec. 31, 2045.

Gates and Musk have traded insults on a number of previous occasions.

Musk called Gates “categorically insane” in 2023 in a dispute over Gates shorting Tesla stock. In September 2020, Musk said Gates “has no clue” when it comes to the viability of electric trucks, and he previously ripped Gates for his purchase of a Porsche Taycan as his first electric vehicle.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the two clashed over vaccines. Gates told CNBC that while Musk makes a “great electric car” and his “rockets work well,” a “high level of outrageous comments” are part of the Tesla CEO’s positioning.