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Bill Gates addresses Twitter, Tesla, Musk, vaccines & Epstein in BBC interview

Gates spoke to a number of recent trending topics that involved him, including his feud with Elon Musk and conspiracy theories regarding vaccines.

TJ Denzer

May 5, 2022 8:24 AM

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Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has been at the center of a lot of popular conversations recently. Some of them were related to his direct involvement and some seemed to have spawned out of thin air, but he was nonetheless pulled into a number of stories regarding vaccines, Twitter, Jeffrey Epstein, and Elon Musk. In a recent BBC interview, he spoke to a lot of these topics and shared his thoughts on them.

In regards to Elon Musk, Gates shared a cool resolve about the matter in his chat with BBC. Musk recently shot at Gates with snide remarks on Twitter regarding Gates allegedly shorting Tesla stock - that is, taking a position that bets on the company failing. Musk claimed Gates’ short position on Tesla undermines his supposed environmental philanthropy. Gates shared that the short had nothing to do with environmentalism or his opinion of Tesla’s technology.

“That has nothing to do with climate change,” Gates claimed. “I have ways of diversifying… The popularity of electric cars will lead to more competition for selling those cars. So there's a difference between electric cars being adopted, and companies becoming infinitely valuable.”

Gates added that “there’s no need for him to be nice to me.”

Gates was also asked what he thought of Elon Musk’s possible upcoming acquisition of Twitter, but his answer here was fairly neutral as well.

“You know, Elon, I guess it's possible Twitter could be worse,” Gates continued. “But it also could be better… So I have a wait and see attitude.”

Gates has every reason to be interested in social media as it’s where a particularly nasty rumor about the billionaire and philanthropist has been cultivated. Bill Gates has poured billions of US dollars into vaccine cultivation and distribution. This led to anti-vax conspiracy theorists forming the belief and spreading the rumor that Gates was implanting chips in vaccines to track people. It’s a belief that he dismissed as outright ludicrous.

“In some ways, you almost have to laugh because it's so crazy,” Gates explained. “I mean, do I really want to track people? You know, I spend billions on vaccines. I don't make money on vaccines. Vaccines save lives.”

Finally, Gates spoke to the matter of Jeffrey Epstein in regards to his relationship with his now ex-wife, Melinda French Gates. When it was announced that the two would be separating, Melinda specified that one of the factors in the matter was Bill meeting with Epstein.

“I made a mistake ever meeting with Jeffrey Epstein,” Gates said on the matter. “You know, maybe [Melinda's] instincts on that were keener than mine… Any meeting I had with him could be viewed as almost condoning his evil behavior. So, that was a mistake.”

It has certainly been an odd and interesting previous year for Bill Gates, but still being one of the richest people in the world that he is, it can also be expected that he’d show up in various stories. Nonetheless, it was an interesting look into some of his thoughts on the most prevalent topics he’s been involved in as of late. It will be interesting to see what comes next for Gates, so stay tuned as we continue to report here at Shacknews.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.