Bill Gates's image on the world stage had started to sour
long before Elon Musk mocked him with a pregnant man emoji.
From 1995 to 2017, Bill Gates was the richest person in the world and was well respected.
He’s pledged to give away at least half his $130 billion dollar fortune.
He was seen as the “good billionaire”.
The likeable, nerdy likable do-gooder who used his riches to try to make the world
a better place through his $50 billion dollar Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
And also through his climate investment fund.
Musk recently accused his fellow billionaire of hypocrisy on climate change.
Musk texted Gates to ask if he still had a half-billion-dollar short position against Tesla.
Meaning, he’s betting that Tesla will fail.
Gates admitted he did.
So when Gates asked to discuss philanthropy opportunities, Musk responded:
“Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive
short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change.”
Elon Musk is not the biggest fan of short-sellers. He even came out with
a pair of red satin Tesla short shorts apparently to mock them.
Gates is not used to mockery.
In the past, he got nothing but praise.
He received an honorary knighthood from the Queen
The Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama
And he graced the cover of Time magazine as the Good Samaritan and Person of the Year in 2005.
But the aura he’s built over twenty years has come crashing down.
In May 2021, Melinda Gates decided to divorce Bill after 27 years of marriage.
They released a joint statement:
“...we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
Their separation came as a shock.
Just a year earlier, Melinda had posted a sweet photo of her and Bill on her Instagram,
captioning it: “Happy anniversary to the man who keeps me dancing through life.”
Few - if any - could tell there was trouble on the dance floor.
At the time of the divorce, the world saw Gates as a brilliant software pioneer who
had famously dropped out of Harvard to co-found Microsoft.
The computer software company was a major player in the personal computer revolution
of the nineties and as Microsoft grew into a giant, Gates turned into a household name.
But his divorce would cause his squeaky-clean image to fall apart.
It wasn’t a case of a marriage that had simply run its course.
Melinda later opened up about what led to the divorce, telling CBS:
"It wasn't one moment or one specific thing that happened. There just came a point in time that
there was enough there that I realized it just wasn't healthy and I couldn’t trust what we had.”
Gates admitted to having an affair with a Microsoft employee twenty years prior, in 2000.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft launched an investigation
in 2019, and the following year, Gates stepped down from the board,
though a spokesperson for Gates denied he was forced off due to the investigation.
When Melinda was asked by CBS whether Bill had cheated on her more than once, she replied:
“I think that’s something that Bill needs to answer.”
The New York Times reported that Gates pursued women on a few occasions,
at both Microsoft and his foundation.
The Times reported that in 2006,
he asked a Microsoft employee out for dinner after attending her presentation at work.
He later wrote her an email: “If this makes you uncomfortable, pretend it never happened”.
Apparently, she did pretend it never happened.
In another instance, Gates was traveling with a woman on foundation business
and during a cocktail party, asked her to dinner according to the Times.
The woman was reportedly uncomfortable and laughed it off.
Former employees have described his advances as
“clumsy” though they “did not perceive it to be predatory”.
However, this behavior is at odds with his foundation’s commitment to empower women.
The idea that he viewed the workplace as a pickup spot may NOT be a surprise
considering that’s where he first met Melinda.
Theirs was described as a “meet-cute” story
despite the obvious power imbalance, he the big boss, she a product manager at Microsoft.
They met at a work dinner in 1987. She initially turned him down, but he continued pursuing her.
Bill recalled in a Netflix documentary: “She had other boyfriends, and I had Microsoft.”
Netflix docuseries Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.
Once it got serious, Bill made a pro and con list for whether he’d propose.
He wasn’t sure if he could commit to marriage and also stay focused on running Microsoft.
As it turned out, the pros won and they ended up tying the knot in Hawaii.
She left the company two years later to focus on raising their three kids.
Melinda was also unhappy and uncomfortable with her husband spending time with Jeffrey Epstein,
the convicted sex offender who eventually killed himself while in custody.
Gates has tried to downplay his ties to Epstein.
But a New York Times investigation found he had met with Epstein many times
and had actually started his relationship with him in 2011, years after Epstein had served time
for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl and was required to register as a sex offender.
Epstein reportedly told a Gates foundation team that met at his Manhattan townhouse
that what he had done was no worse than “stealing a bagel”.
Gates later said meeting Epstein was “a substantial error in judgment”
And that he had entertained Epstein’s ideas related to philanthropy.
Melinda was also reportedly not pleased with how Gates handled a harassment
claim involving his money manager.
Michael Larson has been handling Gates’ fortune for decades through the investment
company Cascade Investment and saw Bill’s fortune balloon from $5 billion to $130 billion today.
He was reportedly accused of sexually harassing a
woman whose bicycle shop was partially owned by a company backed by Cascade.
Sources told the New York Times that the woman reached a settlement with Larson
and signed a nondisclosure agreement.
The controversy surrounding Bill Gates came out long after
he resigned as CEO of Microsoft in 2000.
He’s still keeping busy after retirement.
The Gates Foundation is one of the wealthiest philanthropies
in the world and will allow Gates to wield significant influence over the next decades.
But the power he holds largely comes from his likeability.
Which has now arguably been tarnished.
The question is: Will people ever look at Bill Gates the same way again?
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