Melinda Gates SPEAKS On Epstein Files; Bill Maher CLASHES With Scarborough | RISING

Melinda French Gates, the ex-wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, says that her former husband is going to have to answer for the allegations made against him in the Epstein files. Bill Gates's name shows up multiple times in the most recent batch of documents released by the DOJ. In one email, Epstein appears to accuse Bill of needing medication to treat a sexually transmitted disease. Epstein suggests Bill actually wanted to give the medication to his wife without her knowing. It's absolutely disgusting. Here was Melinda talking about the allegations.

Bill and Melinda were married in 1994 and they divorced in 2021. Three years after the divorce, Melinda left her role as co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A spokesperson for Bill Gates calls the recent claims made about him quote absolutely absurd and completely false. A statement shared with the Hill says quote the only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein's frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to to entrap and defame. The New York Times reports that beginning in 2011, Bill Gates went to Epstein's Manhattan townhouse multiple times to discuss the possibility of raising funds for the Gates Foundation. And since Epstein's death in 2019, Bill has repeatedly expressed regret over his decision to associate with Epstein, but maintains that the two did not have a real business relationship or a friendship.

Lots to get into here. Really disgusting accusations against Bill Gates. Now to be clear, these are not messages between Bill Gates and Epstein. These are messages Epstein sent to himself as a draft seemingly or something like that. So where it's basically like he's not getting what he wants out of Bill Gates anymore and he's like but I know that he needed this. He wanted to get medicine for having slept with a prostitute or something of that nature. Again, that's not confirmation it happened. That's not Bill Gates saying it. So, you got to be a little careful.

It seems pretty clear that Bill Gates, we've already knew this before these files, that Bill Gates is one of those figures who continued to have way too much contact and friendship with Epstein well past the point in which there's any plausible deniability for awareness of what he did. And that's bad judgment on his part. Maybe it's as bad as it is now. I wouldn't put it past anyone to want to ask Bill Gates questions about this. What he was contemplating in the subject of what we just read is pretty awful and maybe even criminal frankly, giving somebody medicine against their will.

He wanted to give it to her because he worried he'd infected her or something of that nature.

Did he want to give the medicine to her? Did he want to take it without her knowledge?

He wanted to give it to her, I think. So, yeah. To make sure he hadn't.

That seems very dodgy. Again, we don't know that any of this is true. This could be secondhand. It could be Epstein recalling it in that way or just wanting to threaten him with something that isn't true. Look, we know Epstein's game. He was himself a sexual predator and then he had all these famous and wealthy friends whose influence he collected and who he sought power over. Now there isn't as much as people would like evidence in all these new disclosures of his famous friends being complicit in the sex with underage people part of it, but they're certainly around the island and talking to him all the time and people like Steve Bannon and Noam Chomsky and Stacy Plaskett and Bill Gates and many others having ongoing relationships, with Noam Chomsky advising him on what he should say to avoid responsibility for the things he's done, right up until the end. So that's all very bad and all very damning and should color our perception of these people. There's not the smoking guns a lot of partisans were looking for in terms of the Clintons or Trump or others.

Nothing. Well, first of all, in terms of Bill Gates, there's no criminal allegation against him and he obviously denies wrongdoing as do many of these other people. And the issue which you raised about judgment in relation to Epstein is a much more salient one. Many of these people retained contact with Epstein after the initial conviction. He pleaded guilty.

Bill Gates has had this massive global role in being an expert, an author, a moral authority on some level for public health and for a set of policies that I've criticized and other hosts on Rising have criticized, our viewers were very suspicious of, involving compulsory vaccination, compulsory all sorts, a more global perspective on public health, cooperation with international health authorities who I think are sometimes wrong. So, I'm critical of all that. I think if you seek that role for yourself, I'm not saying you have to be like morally unimpeachable, but maybe more morally unimpeachable than he comes across in these documents.

Yeah. And I mean I do think and we may slightly diverge here, the release of the documents, which I wanted and I'm supportive of, it has I think informed the public about things that are of real substantive value even if they don't rise to the level of criminality. There has been a sort of corollary information that has come out that has been of genuine public interest. I don't want to divert too much into British politics, but the former British ambassador here to the US, Peter Mandelson, it seems to be having a bigger impact on your government than ours.

Yeah. I mean, Mandelson is in enormous trouble. One reason being he appears, unless this email is somehow faked, he appears to have told Epstein when Mandelson was in government years ago about very sensitive details about the British government's plans. You can't do that, you know, to anybody, not least someone who is of a nationality other than the government in which you are serving. So those kinds of details, I think, are very very important. And the judgment question does come up. And the general sense of a kind of circle or cabal of people who are all in league with each other in a kind of cozy friendly way even if that does not rise to the level that every member of that circle is therefore culpable of crimes which clearly they are not.

Yeah, that's all true. I do think it requires a degree of nuance and I have a piece in the Free Press today expressing some reservations I have about these disclosures. I'll probably cobble together a radar on this tomorrow. I certainly think we've learned noteworthy things and I supported the release of the files because this is an exceptional case of high public interest and a correct perception that the law enforcement aspect of this was mishandled and that there are things we don't know and the public needs to know. So, I get it. That said, there's a reason they don't usually just release investigative files. Releasing the emails themselves is one thing, so we can read them all and decide for ourselves, but they're releasing also photos where they put black boxes over people's... Well, you can make that look more suggestive than it is. I saw everyone going nuts on this longtime friend of Bill Gates who's there's a photo of him and these three children. He's got his hands on one of the underage people's legs and it's all black boxes. It's his own kids. It's him and his wife with his own kids and again that went super viral. Oh my god, here's one. We got one of the pedophiles.

Like you have no idea what you're talking about. And then I saw again the idea trending that Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania and Trump to each other and they said it's confirmed. It's in the Epstein files. Well, no, there's an investigative record where someone told an investigator that so that document exists, but that doesn't mean that's true. That's just what that person told that investigator. That account has been contradicted by Melania and Trump. You can take that for what it's worth. Also I think by the timeline and they sued the Daily Beast and Michael Wolff to have it taken down and they won. So or they got them to agree to take it down. So just because that information is in the Epstein files that doesn't make this in the Epstein files is now becoming a that doesn't mean you're like found guilty of sexual misconduct or even that it's true. And I'm wary of like a witch hunt mentality that's developing around these things.

Yeah, I mean I am not deaf to that argument and it is certainly I think something that people in the media have to be responsible about when there is often very lurid but very uncorroborated information publicly released. I do think that the Epstein matter was so exceptional and so unusual and involved so many very powerful people in politics and outside of politics that the public appetite was quite understandable for greater disclosure. The public's suspicion of a coverup was very high and it is therefore useful to release as much as you can to try to ameliorate that issue.

Yeah, I hear that and I am not saying I disagree with that necessarily, but I think we ought to maybe very much keep to the idea that this is going to be the exception. I think if this starts becoming the rule that we just we have to release everything in every investigation every file you have on this person even if it's uncorroborated, you know, in an era of weaponized law enforcement both ways this seems like it's going to cause a breakdown of trust in our society.

Well sure, this is a special case I agree.

Yeah no it is a special case I take your broader point not least because your broader point would give a license to anyone who has enmity or vendetta towards someone to just make you know it then encourages fictitious allegations basically. I'm not saying that's happening in the Epstein case. I think it's exceptional for all sorts of ways, but I take the broader point.

Late night host Bill Maher and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough got into a heated argument while discussing Representative Ilhan Omar on Maher's show. This follows comments from President Trump where he ripped Omar for being too critical of America and suggested she may have staged last week's incident where she was sprayed with vinegar by a man in the middle of her town hall. Maher denounced President Trump's criticisms of Omar along those lines. But he did say he at least partially agreed with the president that the congresswoman seems to only have negative things to say about America. Let's watch.

There is a kernel of truth in that that somebody comes from a country like Somalia and that it just seems like she does not have any perspective on the country that she joined here and never seems to have anything good to say about America.

The second she came here, my family, my family's probably been here for 400 years. The day she came to America and raised her hand and took the oath, she's every bit as much of an American as you are or me. And I would say this of every other American. Have some perspective.

What I'm saying is have some perspective about this country, not just her, but yes. I mean, if she's from a country like Somalia, which is a country you wouldn't live in, right? Okay. Well, just be honest about it instead of just it just seems like it's always completely negative about this country.

Scarborough then flipped the argument around claiming that Republicans have spent too much time complaining about the state of the country, especially back when Joe Biden was the president. That led to this exchange with former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Donald Trump talks about how the American dream is dead. No, it's not. That's the American dream's not dead. We're stronger militarily. We're stronger economically. We're stronger culturally. We're stronger with soft power. We're stronger in every single way.

I don't know about that. Ask Gen Z. Yeah, they're not feeling so good.

Okay, so now you're talking badly about America. How dare you do that? I think it's a great country.

No, I said ask Gen Z.

Well, would Gen Z rather live in America or Somalia?

I'm just saying the American dream is harder to realize.

I really like this back and forth. It was an interesting discussion. I mean I agree with Bill Maher. I think he wasn't saying that Ilhan Omar has no right to criticize the country. I like Scarborough's correct that she enjoys First Amendment rights and that's fine. And you should not feel unwilling to criticize the country. I think there's a subtle difference but an important difference between criticizing the country or like America as an idea and just criticizing the government of America. I'm very critical of America's government, whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge. I'm very critical of big government and the things our government does. That's different than criticizing America, the people, the idea, the philosophy behind it, which is great and good and should lead the world. That's different than the government. And, you know, I guess I don't parse every single comment Omar has ever made. Sometimes her criticism does event this is a very kind of woke or identity based criticisms of America as a nation rather than just criticism of the government. So I share Bill Maher's that you know this is what rubs me the wrong way about her. But no, she can say whatever she wants.

So America that's a to me that's like a copout what you just said because America is a government that's America is a place that's run by government by leadership. So when you criticize the history of the country, you're never criticizing like the land that we're standing on. You're criticizing the policies that were put in place by the people historically that you continue to push forward as we get older as a country and how we can do better. And she's allowed to criticize the government and leadership and the way that our federal laws have been implemented and how we can do better. So that's but it's not like she's the nation. No, the nation was built up by leaders that she disagrees with sometimes that she can call historically like, 'Hey, this was racist. That's why we had civil rights. Let's move forward. Move on to change.' Well, it does make me go, but Somalia is a failed state and has been one for hundreds of years. And there's that's why she lives in America now. But when she's here and she talks about how bad Somalia is. See, I agree. It makes me mind you, I haven't combed through all her statements. Perhaps she has, but the president likes to have this collective punishment idea, which I constantly hear Ilhan Omar pushing back against, is the fact that if a Somalian in Minnesota did something wrong, we should indict the entire community of Somalians in the entire country. And so she's constantly pushing back on the statements that the president makes that wants to collectively punish all people descending from one country. And I think that that is wildly inappropriate. And so if she seems like she's criticizing when President Trump has been in leadership for eight years, I mean, he's going on a second term, so it'll be eight years when it's all said and done. I mean, eight years of her leadership has been under somebody who doesn't look at her country as legitimate. He says countries about Haiti. He looks at her and says, 'Filthy, disgusting, dirty Somali.' We heard him say that. So when he looks at her country and where she's from like that, of course she's going to criticize that and also say, 'I'm an American, but you need to have some kind of empathy and open-mindedness about how you enforce immigration because now you're punishing an entire country based on the actions of a select few.'

Yeah. I would just if I was her I would evidence some appreciation for all of the rights and entitlements that one has as an American.

Has she never done that though? That's why Bill Maher's like over parsed all that.

That's what I'm saying. It's an easy jab as somebody who you see is heavily critical of President Trump. But you see that President Trump is heavily critical of the same people also. Marjorie Taylor Greene is extremely critical of lawmakers specifically in Congress constantly in the last few months coming at the she says they're all pawns of President Trump and how they failed. So she's not happy. So she's not happy saying America is a broken racist bad colonialist.

So if she doesn't she might not be using the word racist but she said we're broken. We're failing Gen Z. She says that we're failing on healthcare. Not government.

Exactly. So if by having policies that favor seniors at the expense of young people, that's what she's getting at. And if we have policies that favor migrants that are from places where people look like they're whites and we look at black countries and we call them disgusting and we look at people that study Islam, which is a beautiful culture, and say that they're bad. You know, that's like why is Islam bad? Like people actually who study the Islamic faith are not criminals and killers. Like that's what we don't understand. We overanalyze. We indict an entire community of people looking into one ideal or looking into one location and say you're all bad. And that's where America has it wrong. I mean, I've literally spent time because I have a travel show in UAE and understood the Muslim culture, understood Islam, and spent time understanding this. And these people are some of the most peaceful people that I know. And the fact that we indict, and I know we're going on a different tangent, but it's just differences from what America sees as normal. And now we say that you're all bad. You're all criminals. And that's what we need to stop doing. So she has to scream from the rooftops.

A lot of straw in there. I'm not saying they're all bad or they're all criminal or any of those things.

No, the president does by saying things like filthy, disgusting, dirty. Like this is what he calls places like that.

Because their countries are not well-run. Do you deny that? They have lower GDP. They have lower literacy rates. They have lower everything there. So, we're being a little cautious about how much of the third world can enter this country at one time because we don't want to import the values and the way civilization is structured there because something we're doing was right and something they're doing was wrong and we don't want it to become like you must concede that. I mean, we're not taking unfair shots. These countries are worse places to live. I want them to become better places to live, which is why I favor trade and engagement with these countries that want to be pro-America and want to collaborate in business ventures and want to develop. They shouldn't be reliant on our aid forever, but there should be mutually beneficial economic arrangements that bring them along and that raise their GDP that raise their standard of living and then they have more democracy and they have more freedom of speech and they have more market capitalism and they have all the things that we want them to have and we can benefit from their labor and some exchange some level of immigration from their countries is fine and I'm in support of it. More in support of it I think than most Republicans but I'm in support of it. But we can't have there is concerns about our values being overrun by the values of people and I don't have anything against most peace-loving Muslim people either or the people of any faith but we're talking about Europe is facing massive chain migration from the Middle East from destabilized countries partly destabilized because of wars we've had there that I was against but there are concerns about importing terrorists and criminals who are disproportionately among their midst. That doesn't mean they're all terrorists and criminals and we should take none of them. It means we have to do a little bit of vetting. Is that wrong to do a little bit of vetting and say, are we making sure the people who are coming in here aren't people who want to destroy us and kill us?

Like that's what we're asking questions about because you talk about hate crime statistics and how oh it's more white supremacist gangs. The number one extremist category in the US is Islamic extremism because of 9/11. So the president's direct response to the fraud happening in Minnesota, which was widespread after the pandemic, not just Minnesota and not just Somali people, was to shut down access to Somali people to immigrate into this country. This is not a proper...

Disproportionately. Why I guess why is that not a disproportionate...

Because in Minnesota, which is the largest population of Somali people in our country in general, there was a widespread fraud. But across the country, if you look at fraud during the pandemic and afterwards, we can look at places like Ohio. We can look at other states and fraud was rampant. So we should look at every single community then and say we're shutting down immigration everywhere and not just look at Somalia and say, 'Well, this country is the worst, the bad. You learned something bad from there.' As opposed to them just being migrants that did something bad in the community because they saw an opportunity to take advantage like everyone else of the thousands of people that have been prosecuted after the pandemic that have taken advantage of our government. We didn't shut down access to every single person, every single place they immigrated from. We didn't look at how many migrants came from.

I don't believe you. I don't believe you. Take this to its logical conclusion. Let's say we found out that the white supremacist violence, it's mostly prison gangs. Let's say that turned out those had been immigrants or recent immigrants from a particular region of Germany where there's some neo-Nazi or Argentina or wherever they all immigrated to. And it turned out by a significant margin it's all from that country. Of course, we should shut off immigration to that country from...

I'm not indicting the whole country of Germany. I don't think that's the right way forward.

I think it's obvious that they would do that and that would not be so wrong.

Well, to tie this all in a bow, I think that Bill Maher is overgeneralizing what Ilhan Omar does. I think she defends a place that she was born, but also by being a Congress member, you would think that most people are devoting their lives to pushing for things that they genuinely believe will make our country better. Whether you think Congress is effective or not, the fact that you go into a role like that which is considered public service. I mean, she is committing her life to this country. And so, the fact that you feel like she's always negative, well, she's equally as negative as Marjorie Taylor Greene, if you want to look at it like negative about the history versus negative about the right now. It's all about policies. Policies make our country what it is. And she's able to criticize them. It shouldn't be condemned because she's overly critical of President Trump, who is extremely critical of pretty much everybody that doesn't agree with him.

Trevor Noah took a shot at President Trump at the 68th annual Grammy Awards. Let's take a listen.

Song of the year. Congratulations, Billy Eilish. Wow, that is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense. I mean, because Epstein's Island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton. So, oh, I told you it's my last year. What are you going to do about it?

President Trump responded to Noah's jab, writing on Truth Social, "The Grammy Awards are the worst. Virtually unwatchable. CBS lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer. The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the Low Ratings Academy Awards. Noah said incorrectly about me that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. Wrong. I can't speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close. And until tonight's false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the fake news media. Noah, a total loser. Better get his facts straight and get them straight fast. It looks like I'll be sending my lawyer to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an MC and suing him for plenty of money."

He took the time out. Political commentator Harry Cisson reacted to Trump's post, writing on X, quote, "It's 1:00 a.m. and Donald Trump is awake furiously posting on social media about the Grammys." He says he's suing Trevor Noah for joking about him being on Epstein Island. What a snowflake. So much for free speech.

That does, it's giving crybaby. Like, don't watch the show if it's so boring and trash. He also, Trevor Noah came at Bill Clinton. So it's not like, oh, it was Democrat or Republican. He came at every politician. He's a comedian. You know, it's equal opportunity comedy. I don't understand why Trump was going to get so panties in a bunch about this. He needs to just...

Well, because probably a significant portion of the people at the Grammys, or the liberals all watching the Grammys—I can't imagine who else would watch the Grammys—think that Trump probably was on the island even though there's no evidence of that.

So, we're just concerned about, to use a, let's put this in democratic parliament, we're just very concerned about the spread of viral misinformation. And there's a lot of misinformation available online that experts have not vetted. And I'm just very concerned about people being allowed to say things that experts disagree with, and so that we'll have misinformation and our democracy will be misinformed.