Bill Gates has launched a stunning broadside against Elon Musk and the Trump administration, accusing them of orchestrating a “mass death event” in the world’s poorest countries by gutting foreign aid programs. In a recent media blitz, Gates claimed the decision to slash U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funding will lead to millions of deaths, particularly among children in the developing world.

Gates cited preprint studies — not peer-reviewed — forecasting a grim future if global health programs lose American funding. The most dire predictions: over 15 million additional AIDS deaths, 8 million child deaths, 40–55 million unplanned pregnancies, and a surge in unsafe abortions by 2040.

He pinned the blame squarely on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Musk, for axing the funding. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Gates told the Financial Times.

Gates also took his outrage to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, claiming the administration “put USAID in the woodchipper.” He warned that unless funding is restored fast, global child mortality rates — which had been declining — will now rise.

But Musk isn’t taking the attack lying down.

“Gates is a huge liar,” the Tesla CEO and Trump administration official posted in response to another interview where Gates suggested the DOGE would cost two million lives.

Foreign Aid or Woke Pipeline?

The heart of the debate is what, exactly, USAID was spending billions on before the cuts. Under scrutiny by Musk’s DOGE, USAID was found to have funneled tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into projects that critics say had little to do with humanitarian aid and everything to do with advancing progressive ideology abroad.

Here’s a sample of the expenditures DOGE flagged:

• $45 million on “DEI scholarships” in Burma
• $6 million to “transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles”
• $2 million to support sex-change activism in Guatemala
• $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq
• $37.7 million studying HIV among “sex workers, their clients, and transgender people” in South Africa
• $1.5 million promoting DEI in Serbia’s business sector
• $19 million for “inclusion” programs in Vietnam
• $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become “climate leaders”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the cuts, stating many USAID programs “did not serve, and in some cases even harmed, the core national interests of the United States.”

Philanthropy or Power?

Gates, meanwhile, insists his intentions are purely charitable. He pledged to spend $200 billion through the Gates Foundation before shutting it down, with $10 billion a year targeted at global health, vaccines, and maternal care. But critics view the foundation — which quietly changed its name this year after scandals tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Gates’ divorce — as a shadow force for laundering influence and reshaping foreign policy behind closed doors.

Some analysts have described Gates’ relationship with USAID as a “money-laundering scheme” where tax dollars fund NGOs that, in turn, push political agendas under the guise of charity.

Betting on Congress

Gates admits his foundation can’t replace lost federal dollars and is banking on Congress to override the Trump administration’s spending policies.

“I see it as a four- to six-year interruption,” Gates told the New York Times Magazine, confident that future administrations will restore the flow of taxpayer money to global programs.

But for now, the Biden-era version of USAID is effectively gone. DOGE has restructured the agency, and the Trump White House appears intent on keeping it lean, focusing only on programs tied to clear national interest or direct humanitarian need — not ideology.

Bottom Line

The clash is about more than foreign aid — it’s about who decides where America’s money goes. For Gates, it’s a matter of life and death. For Musk, it’s about ending decades of taxpayer abuse under the banner of “philanthropy.”

Whether the public sides with the Microsoft billionaire or the SpaceX boss may come down to whether Americans believe foreign aid should fund vaccines and food — or climate diversity training in Tajikistan.

The battle lines are drawn. And both men are just getting started.