Elon Musk responds to Bill Gates after he accused him of ‘killing the world’s poorest children’

Bill Gates has strongly criticized Elon Musk for the way he handled his job in a government department called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was set up during Donald Trump’s second term as U.S. president. Trump had appointed Musk to run DOGE with the goal of cutting costs and making the government more efficient.
Musk didn’t waste any time. Within just three months, he sent out a tough message to federal workers, essentially telling many of them they were being let go. The government later had to rehire 180 of those workers after realizing they still needed them.
Gates was very upset about Musk’s actions, especially because the cuts also affected foreign aid programs like USAID, which helps poor people around the world. Gates accused Musk of harming the world’s most vulnerable children by cutting support to these programs. USAID, before Musk’s changes, employed around 10,000 people and spent $40 million on humanitarian help in 2023. Musk, however, said the agency was completely corrupt and needed to be shut down entirely, comparing it to a rotten apple that’s nothing but worms.
Gates found this deeply troubling and told the Financial Times that Musk, the richest man in the world, was effectively causing the deaths of the poorest children by ending support for critical services like medicine and food deliveries. According to Gates, because of these cuts, important supplies have been left to expire in warehouses, and this could lead to the return of deadly diseases like measles, HIV, and polio in poorer countries.
He also accused Musk of stopping aid to a hospital in Gaza that helps prevent mothers from passing HIV to their babies. Gates said Musk canceled the funding based on a false claim that the U.S. was giving out condoms to Hamas. Gates challenged Musk to visit the children now suffering from HIV because of the funding cuts.
In response, Musk dismissed Gates’ criticism with a short message on Twitter, simply calling him “a huge liar.” He posted the message after seeing Gates repeat the same concerns during an interview on CBS.