Bill Gates Was 'Impressed' by Donald Trump After Having an 'Intriguing' 3-Hour Dinner With Him at Mar-a-Lago

Bill Gates revealed he was "impressed" with Donald Trump after a recent three-hour meeting with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

The billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder said he sat with Trump and incoming White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles where they discussed infectious diseases and the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gates was asked if he had met with Trump. He replied, "Yeah, I had a chance to go have a long and actually quite intriguing dinner with him."

When he was pressed to expound on what had intrigued him, Gates said they had a discussion that made an impression on him.

"So the four of us sat there, and it was quite wide-ranging. You know, global health is the area that I work in, and such amazing things have happened and can happen there," Gates told the Journal. "I spoke a lot about HIV and that the foundation’s literally working on a cure for that. We’re at an early stage. And so, you know, he in the COVID days accelerated the vaccine innovation."

"So I, you know, was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here. And we both got, I think, pretty excited about that."

"We talked about polio where, you know, we're very close to getting that done. But if you, if you stop, it’ll spread back. And so I explained why it’s been tough in Pakistan, Afghanistan," the tech billionaire continued.

"We’ve had cases show up in Gaza. We have cases in Africa. And he was fascinated to hear what he could do to maximize the chance that during the next four years, that incredible milestone will be achieved," he explained. "I felt like he was, you know, energized and — you know — looking forward to helping to drive innovation. You know, I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up."

Details of the dinner emerged just weeks after Trump made a cryptic post on Truth Social saying that Gates had asked to come to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. At the time, online sleuths speculated that Trump’s message was meant for fellow tech billionaire Elon Musk.

"Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago? Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT," the incoming president wrote.

Other top business billionaires such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump in the lead-up to his January 20 inauguration.