Her ex-husband, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, recently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. She also referenced Elon Musk and how the Department of Government Efficiency has gutted the federal government.

“All I can say is that a good manager doesn’t just immediately cut something off. They go out. They understand the work. They see what differences have been made. And then you might say, ‘ok, maybe 10% of it wasn’t being spent well. Or this 5% over here was wasted in some way.’ None of us want that with our taxpayer dollars. But good management doesn’t say you just cut something immediately… and then even all these U.S. employees are gone. That’s just something I don’t understand,” she said on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip.

French Gates, who is worth an estimated $30 billion, made a substantial donation to the campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. The exact amount has not been made public. She also offered to host events for the failed campaign’s bid for the White House.

In further reflecting on the election, Gates suggested that the donations made by billionaires to both the Republican and Democratic parties did not sway the vote, as this “power” was with the voters. She also said it is likely that voters “wanted a change” and were not content with the status quo of the nation.

Now, French Gates, who exited the Gates Foundation last year after receiving $12.5 billion, is urging people in the highest tax brackets to be more philanthropic, saying they have a “moral responsibility” to donate at least half of their wealth to causes.

“And so the other thing I’ve done with my ex-husband, and also Warren Buffett, is we’ve started something called the Giving Pledge, because I think if you have a billion dollars, that’s an absurd amount of wealth,” French Gates said. “You have a moral responsibility to give away at least half of it, and in my case, I’m trying to spend my energy and my time and my resources doing exactly that.”

Last year, French Gates also committed to donating $1 billion to her organization, Pivotal Ventures, through 2026 in a bid to advance “women’s power globally.”

French Gates claimed that one of the things that spurred her to pursue her own ventures post-divorce is how her two granddaughters “don’t have as many rights right now as I did growing up.” She did not specify what rights her granddaughters currently lack, but did state that there are some issues she would like to see advanced in the United States, mentioning paid family medical leave as an example.

DEMOCRATIC PARTY TROUBLES MOUNT AS MORE VOTERS TURN RIGHT, GIVE GOP EDGE

The Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe Doescher shared Gates’s comment on X, noting that when the billionaire, 60, was born, a woman who was unmarried could not get a credit card “without her dad co-signing it.” She also pointed to how insurers that are legally required to provide birth control at no cost “did not exist” at the time.

When Melinda was born, unwed women weren’t allowed to get a CREDIT CARD without her dad co-signing it. To include a wife’s income in a mortgage application, her doctor had to prove she was sterilized. The birth control that insurers are legally required to provide for women at… https://t.co/AbhTQjSInV

— Tiana Lowe Doescher (@TianaTheFirst) April 16, 2025

“Spare me this drivel,” Doescher wrote. “There is no better time or place in human history to be a woman than the USA, today.”