Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, said U.S. President Donald Trump asked him twice if there was a difference between HIV and HPV, according to video footage obtained by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
In the video, which was aired Thursday on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Gates was seen speaking at a recent Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation meeting and was taking questions from staff. Gates was describing his first encounters with Trump in December 2016 and March 2017.
The billionaire philanthropist told the audience that he had a meeting with the president at Trump Tower, in which he urged him to become a leader in science and innovation, potentially accelerating an HIV vaccine.
“He asked me if vaccines weren’t a bad thing, because he was considering a commision to look into ill effects of vaccines, and somebody – I think it was Robert Kennedy Jr. – was advising him that vaccines were causing bad things,” Gates said. “And I said ‘no’ that’s a dead end. That would be a bad thing, don’t do that.”
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Gates added at both meetings Trump asked him if “there was a difference between HIV and HPV.”
“So I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other,” he said as the audience laughed.
HIV, short for human immunodeficiency virus, attacks the immune system and can lead to AIDS. HPV, human papillomavirus, is a sexually transmitted infection that can cause genital warts or cervical cancer.
Gates also told the audience that he had never met the president before the election, but his daughter Jennifer, 22, had previously encountered him at an event in Florida.
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“He went up and talked to Jen and was being super nice. And then around 20 minutes later he flew in on a helicopter to the same place. So clearly he had been driven away and he wanted to make a grand entrance on a helicopter,” Gates said.
Global News reached out to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a comment but did not hear back at the time of publication.