Bill Gates Becomes the Latest Billionaire to Bow Down to Trump

Another billionaire chooses Trump. This time, it’s the historically liberal Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Gates told The Wall Street Journal that he was “impressed” by the president-elect.

“I had a chance to go have a long, and actually quite intriguing dinner with him,” Gates said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. He noted that he talked to Trump for three hours, along with Trump aide Susie Wiles and Gates’s aide Larry Cohen.

“I spoke a lot about HIV, and that the foundation’s literally working on a cure for that. We’re at an early stage, and so he, in the Covid days accelerated vaccine innovation, so I was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here, and we both got … pretty excited about that,” said Gates. He also noted that they got excited talking about a cure to polio. “I felt like he was energized and looking forward to helping to drive innovation.… I was frankly impressed with how well he showed a lot of interest in the issues I brought up.”

It’s a stunning remark from Gates, one of the richest people in the world, who previously said he donated more than $50 million to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The news of the meeting comes after Trump claimed last month that the billionaire was begging to have a meeting with him.

It also comes after Elon Musk has entered Trump’s inner circle, and other billionaires trail closely behind. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are expected to sit together with Musk on the dais at Trump’s inauguration on Monday, as is TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. This rallying of tech heavyweights around the incoming president, even in the face of his right-wing base, only reaffirms what Trump has been saying over and over again: Everybody does want to be his friend.

Donald Trump’s supporters were feeling a little left out in the cold Friday after the president-elect announced his inauguration ceremony was moving indoors due to predictions of severely low temperatures.

In two interviews Friday, MSNBC spoke with a few disappointed MAGA fans on the streets of Washington, D.C., who were coming to terms with the fact that they would not be able to watch Trump be sworn in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

“I mean, we came all the way to Washington from Oklahoma, and you know, now we’re not going to see it?” said one man. “We might as well have stayed home and watched it on TV!”

“It’s actually something we’ve been looking forward to for historical purposes, and being a part of it, that’s once in a lifetime,” a different man said. Another man with him chimed in, “Absolutely!”

“Made all the plans, all the arrangements to come up and be a part of this event,” the first man continued. “And all of a sudden to hear that it’s being indoors, that’s—”

“We’re prepared for the weather!” interjected the second man.

While Trump’s fans aren’t pleased, everyone else just thinks it’s funny that the man obsessed with crowd size might have a severely underwhelming turnout.

Dan’s Cafe, a local Washington bar, noted on X that for Trump’s fans, the walls of the U.S. Capitol never presented much of a barrier to entry.

Others were shocked by Trump’s apparent lack of resilience.

While others thought it seemed very unpresidential to avoid the cold.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a federal law that effectively bans TikTok, the social media platform’s CEO is trying to butter up Donald Trump.

Shou Zi Chew posted a video to the platform Friday thanking the president-elect “for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.

“We are grateful and pleased to have the support of a president who truly understands our platform—one who has used TikTok to express his own thoughts and perspectives, connecting with the world and generating more than 60 billion views of his content in the process.”

By specifically mentioning Trump and his fan base on the app, Chew appears to be making a last-ditch effort to save TikTok in the U.S., with the service scheduled to shut down on Sunday if the platform’s China-based company does not divest. The actual language of the law technically just requires the platform to be removed from app stores so new users can’t download it.

President Biden said Thursday that he wouldn’t enforce the ban during the last few days of his presidency, leaving its interpretation and implementation to Trump. The president-elect has said in recent months that he opposes a ban, going against his own previous position and what used to be near-universal opposition to TikTok on the right.

A ban on TikTok may not even be effective in deterring China from collecting the personal data of Americans, and conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, while voting to uphold the ban, questioned its wisdom. But right now, the app may be functionally useless by Sunday, unless it’s sold to an American owner in the eleventh hour. Perhaps Trump has his own plans for TikTok that involve its CEO pledging allegiance to him like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Republicans are looking to gut and slash federal programs in order to afford an extension to Donald Trump’s 2017 tax plan.

The extension, which overwhelmingly benefits corporations and could add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit, would arrive at the expense of dozens of popular federal programs. But perhaps most egregious among the penny-pinching proposals is a plan to literally take food away from hungry children by nixing free school meal plans made available to some of the poorest families in the country.

Raising the threshold of eligibility for schools to receive the Community Eligibility Provision could save the government $3 billion over a span of 10 years, according to a menu-like list released by the House Ways and Means Committee intended to serve as cutting options for the House reconciliation package.

“The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) allows the nation’s highest-poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without collecting household applications,” the proposal reads. “Instead, schools that adopt CEP are reimbursed using a formula based on participation in other specific means-tested programs, such as SNAP and TANF. Currently, schools can qualify if 40 percent of students receive these programs. This proposal would lift that to 60 percent.”

It shouldn’t take much to argue that taking food away from children is a bad thing. But data shows that food insecurity has been on the rise in the U.S. for the last several decades, and it has seen a considerable spike since the pandemic, according to the USDA. It affects roughly one in seven American households, according to data from the Food Research and Action Center, affecting an estimated 47.4 million people across the country.

A 2013 survey of K-8 public school teachers by No Kid Hungry found that six in 10 teachers across the nation knew that their students were regularly coming to school hungry. Teachers in the same study reported that 80 percent of students were coming to school hungry one or more times per week and that “most or a lot of their students” relied on school meals as their “primary source of nutrition.”

And there are immediate educational benefits to supplying children with meals: A 2018 study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that students who received the subsidized lunches were far less likely to need disciplinary action, such as school suspensions. Other studies have suggested that more breakfasts and lunches could improve academic performance or their health.

Donald Trump has a set of executive orders to carry out his disturbing plans ready to go as soon as he is sworn in as president on Monday.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is ready to bypass Congress with orders on the border, tariffs, and other agenda items. In a meeting with Senate Republicans that lasted two hours, Trump said he had already prepared about 100 executive orders that push the limits of presidential authority.

It’s a worrying prospect, considering Trump’s actions during his first presidential term, which included instituting a “Muslim ban” on immigration or rolling back close to 100 environment rules. This time, Trump has set the stage for even worse with the extreme promises he made on the 2024 campaign trail, from mass deportations to taking on birthright citizenship.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration used Title 42, a public emergency order, to close the southern U.S. border. During his second term, his aides are actually looking for the threat of a new disease to justify closing the border. As for the tariffs, Trump has already proposed creating a new, unnecessary “External Revenue Service” to handle their collection and is already preparing plans to tailor the tariffs to target “critical imports.”

All of these plans, even if they are successfully implemented via executive order and survive legal challenges, will have unforeseen consequences to the economy and to American life. But Trump has been emboldened by his election victory, and believes he has a mandate to force his agenda forward. If things don’t work out the way he wants, he will find someone else to blame and claim the opposite is what he wanted all along.

Failed presidential candidate and Trump disciple Vivek Ramaswamy is planning to run for governor of Ohio, according to The Washington Post.

Ramaswamy, who is set to co-lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk, apparently plans to work with the group for a year before setting out on the campaign trail in Ohio. “Vivek’s base plan remains [the] same: to get accomplishments at DOGE and then announce a run for governor shortly,” a source familiar with the matter told the Post.

Ohio will have gubernatorial elections in 2026, and current Governor Mike DeWine is term-limited. Ramaswamy is from Cincinnati.

This surprising news comes after Ramaswamy went on a wild rant last month criticizing what he saw as a lazy, anti-intellectual white American culture, in an apparent defense of H-1B visas. He was eviscerated by the MAGA right for his views, and the DOGE co-lead has been relatively silent online since then. His only post on X in recent weeks has been a reference to Trump’s upcoming inauguration. It’s hard not to speculate that this sudden move may have something to do with that internal rift he helped fuel between tech MAGA and base MAGA.

Elsewhere in Ohio news, DeWine on Friday announced his Lieutenant Governor John Husted will replace JD Vance as one of Ohio’s senators.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of homeland security, got some heat for rattling off dubious statistics during her Senate confirmation hearing Friday. 

Michigan Senator Gary Peters noted that the hearing had considered a “fair amount of political theater,” and reminded those listening that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee endeavored to be a “fact-based committee.”

“We’ve heard a lot of numbers being thrown around here. And I don’t have time to go through and challenge those numbers; some of them we don’t even know where they came from,” Peters said. “I don’t think that’s helpful to the very important mission of confirm that you’re gonna be dealing with.

“So, I hope that in the future that we’re actually dealing with facts. You’ve mentioned many times that you want to deal with facts, and real data. And again, we’ve heard a lot here that’s not real data. And we should not operate that way,” Peters said.

Peters’s comment, though not directed at any particular person, seemed to be a way to chastise those present for providing sourceless numbers about immigration—including Noem.  

“President Trump was elected with a clear mandate,” Noem said in her opening statement. “He needs to achieve this mission because two-thirds of Americans support his immigration and border policies, including the majority of Hispanic Americans.”

But a postelection survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that just 26 percent of Americans agreed that the U.S. military should put undocumented immigrants into internment camps until they can be deported, which is exactly Trump’s plan. Not even two-thirds of Republicans support such an extreme plot, only 46 percent. Not exactly a mandate. 

Noem also rattled off a slate of numbers about immigration that didn’t seem totally sound, either. 

“Over 13,000 murderers loose in this country that have come over that border. We have had almost 16,000 rapists and sexual assault perpetrators that are loose in this country right now. Four hundred eighty-five thousand–plus people have criminal convictions that are here in this country,” she insisted

Noem appears to have gotten her numbers from DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but she is misstating some of the facts. In July, ICE reported that there were 13,000 immigrants who have been convicted of homicide, either in their home country or in the U.S., and 16,000 who are convicted of sexual assault but who were not currently in ICE detention. While Noem suggested that these individuals are “loose,” she failed to provide the essential caveat that they could already be in jail for their crimes or not “prioritized” for detention by ICE itself.

The ICE report also stated that there were 425,431 undocumented immigrants outside of ICE detention who were convicted criminals, and an additional 222,141 with pending criminal charges—not “485,000-plus.”

Much of Noem’s hearing revolved around so-called “migrant crime,” as she insisted that undocumented immigrants had been allowed to get away with rape and murder under the Biden administration—something that is simply not true. 

Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted will take Vice President-elect JD Vance’s place in the Senate, Governor Mike DeWine announced Friday, in an apparent snub to Donald Trump.

“This is an unusual situation, and it’s frankly a very heavy responsibility,” DeWine, a two-term former senator himself, told reporters at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. “I think I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to succeed in the United States Senate and what it takes to represent your state.”

“The person that is best suited to serve as the United States senator is a person who has served next to me for the last six years,” DeWine said. “I know his knowledge of Ohio, I know his heart, I know his skills. And all of that tells me that he is the right person for this job.

“John Husted will be right at home in the United States Senate.”

DeWine laid out his criteria for selecting Husted, clarifying that he “wanted someone who knew Ohio,” emphasizing the state’s agricultural and cultural diversity, and who could also understand the fundamental interplay between the federal government and the state government.

“There is so much interaction, and so much of we—of what I do, is impacted not just by the laws of Congress but, frankly, by the different rules and regulations put forward by the president and the executive branch,” DeWine continued.

“Third, I wanted someone who would go to the United States Senate and work. I wanted a workhorse,” DeWine added, stressing the state of the country’s military and national security.

“Finally, the next person who goes to the U.S. Senate, I know, would have to run and run and run,” the governor said, noting that the Ohio senatorial replacement would need to be able to win over the state’s denizens by the 2026 election.

Husted has been allied with DeWine since they ran together to lead Ohio in 2018. He also served as Ohio’s secretary of state and was in the running to replace DeWine in 2026, when the term-limited governor’s career atop Ohio politics is slated to end.

“I look forward to working with President Trump and JD Vance to make America great again,” Husted told reporters following his appointment. “I have dedicated most of my professional life to serving the state of Ohio, and stepping away as lieutenant governor is not easy.”

In the wake of the announcement, Ohio Democrats highlighted Husted’s controversial background in the state’s politics, including avoiding depositions and soliciting donations from FirstEnergy as the energy company sought to secure a bailout for its nuclear power plants—something that the Ohio Capital Journal described as the “largest corruption scheme in state history.”

“While Governor DeWine may have handed Husted a literal get out of jail free card, Ohioans won’t tolerate a career politician with a penchant for corruption and scandal,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters said in a statement. “It’s already clear we can’t trust Husted. Over the next two years, Democrats will work tirelessly to hold Husted accountable and will be contesting this competitive seat in the midterm election.”

It’s the first time that Ohio has had to fill a Senate vacancy since 1974, when William B. Saxbe left the seat to serve as the U.S. attorney general.

Vance officially resigned from the post last week. Under Ohio law, DeWine was singularly tasked with appointing his replacement. Husted will operate as senator until 2026, when a special election will determine who will serve in the role until the term expires in 2029.

DeWine was tight-lipped throughout the months-long process to fill Vance’s vacancy, but other potential candidates included Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague, former state Senator Matt Dolan, Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose, Columbus-area Congressman Mike Carey, and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken.

Trump threw a Molotov into the mix just days before Husted’s appointment, personally imploring Vivek Ramaswamy to take the seat if it were offered to him. Ramaswamy publicly backed out of the race to replace Vance in November after Trump announced him as a potential co-chair for the not-yet-real Department of Government Efficiency alongside world’s richest man, Elon Musk. But Ramaswamy seemingly changed his mind over the last week, meeting with DeWine to discuss the appointment. DeWine also visited Mar-a-Lago last week.

Moments before DeWine’s announcement, an anonymous source close to Ramaswamy told Reuters that the biotech executive is planning to launch a run to become Ohio’s governor.

This story has been updated.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was asked during her hearing Friday whether she was committed to stopping all threats to homeland security—not just the ones that push Donald Trump’s agenda on immigration.

Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, who previously served as a Middle East analyst for the CIA, asked Noem if she intended to be “clear and honest about facts” related to terrorist threats in the United States.

“So, it’s just important to me that I know particularly since you do have one of the intelligence agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, that you’re gonna call a spade a spade,” Slotkin said. “The most recent acts of domestic terrorism in New Orleans—horrible incident—in Nevada, had nothing to do with migrants. Correct?”

“Correct,” Noem replied.

“They were homegrown American citizens; one of them was actually in a very elite military unit. I mean, it’s horrible. It’s one of the hardest things to catch. The sort of lone wolf, radicalized American citizen,” Slotkin continued. It’s worth noting that the incident in Nevada, in which a man detonated fireworks inside a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, was investigated as a possible terrorist attack but ultimately ruled a suicide by local officials.

“But I want to protect ourselves, our most recent examples of domestic terrorism were not what we have spent the majority talking about today: crime from a migrant,” Slotkin said. She noted that she didn’t dispute that some crimes are committed by immigrants—in fact, Slotkin was one of the more than two dozen Democrats who voted in support of the Laken Riley Act, which would, among other things, allow the government to detain undocumented immigrants accused of committing nonviolent crimes.

During the hearing, several Republican lawmakers had already waxed poetic on their xenophobic views about immigrants and fretted over so-called “migrant crime,” of which Trump had touted gruesome cases on the campaign trail in an attempt to fearmonger about Joe Biden’s immigration and border policies. In reality, undocumented immigrants are statistically less likely to commit a violent crime—but “migrant crime” still manages to take up lots of airtime and column inches, as well as generate clicks because it evidently also wins elections.

“I just want to know, and I want to hear from you, as an intelligence officer, that you’re going to speak about real threats and not blow something up, politicize something, make something more exciting because maybe that’s what the president wants to hear,” Slotkin said. “But your mission to protect and defend the Constitution means calling honestly what the threats are to the country. Can you just give me a ‘yes or no,’ please?”

“Yes, Senator,” Noem replied, before proceeding to answer about half the question. “I will be as transparent and factual every day with you and the American people as possible, based on the information that I have.”

“I don’t know if the investigations are closed in New Orleans and in Nevada, but what we know so far and needs to be related to the American people needs to be the truth and facts,” Noem said, as if to leave the door open to potential immigrant connections in those incidents—a wild theory that some Republicans, including Trump’s incoming “border czar” Tom Homan, pushed in the weeks since.

Whether she intended to focus on threats from American citizens with the same politicized fervor with which her Republican colleagues have addressed the crimes of undocumented immigrants remains to be seen.

More details are emerging about Donald Trump Jr.’s trip to Greenland, and it’s looking a lot worse than previously thought.

The Guardian reports that when Trump Jr. visited the upscale Hotel Hans Egede for lunch, the “fans” wearing MAGA hats with him were actually homeless people picked up off the street who were promised a free lunch and didn’t find out who Trump was until later.

Trump Jr. “had just met them in the street and invited them for lunch, or his staff did. But I don’t think they knew who they were inviting,” said the hotel’s chief executive, Jørgen Bay-Kastrup.

“That of course was a little bit strange to us because we saw guests that we have never seen in our hotel before—and will probably never see again because it’s out of their economical means,” Bay-Kastrup added. “They were just, ‘Hey, somebody invited us for lunch, let’s go and join him.’ I think they found out later who it was.”

One student who joined the photo op at the hotel, Malik Dollerup-Scheibel, told The Wall Street Journal the experience was “very weird.” He now regrets taking part, saying he only wanted free beer and to meet a famous American. He believes Trump’s visit appeared to be a stunt to convince MAGA supporters that Greenland’s people want the U.S. to take over the island.

“This is probably the most shameful thing I own,” Dollerup-Scheibel said, holding up the MAGA hat he was given. He didn’t expect to have his face circulating on social media.

Trump’s visit led to some American YouTubers showing up on the island handing out $100 bills and “Make Greenland Great Again” hats. While some young people gleefully exchanged the money for Danish kroner and headed for bars, others were less enthused. One man ripped up a bill and stomped on the red baseball cap, according to The Wall Street Journal. It appears the island’s residents aren’t that keen on President-elect Trump or his threats to seize their homeland.