Melinda Gates and her husband have spent billions of dollars fighting diseases like polio, and in a Friday morning interview, she slammed the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus, calling it “chaos.”
Asked if she is surprised that the U.S. was not “better prepared,” Gates said that she is surprised that “we’ve wasted so much time. That we haven’t had leadership at the national level to get out tests in the right way, protective gear in the right way, contact tracing in the right way.”
She went on to praise the way that Germany has handled the coronavirus (the country has suffered less than 8,000 deaths, reportedly). Gates noted that Germany is starting to “slowly re-open based on the science.”
She added, “That’s the kind of leadership we should expect as citizens in this country and we’re not getting it. We haven’t gotten it yet during his crisis and so you’re seeing what’s happening and it’s chaos.”
Asked if she blames the Trump Administration, Gates responded, “I’m disappointed in what I’ve been seeing, yes.”
See her remarks below:
“I'm surprised we've wasted so much time. That we haven't had leadership at the national level to get out tests in the right way, protective gear in the right way, contact tracing in the right way… And so you're seeing what's happening. And it's chaos." – @MelindaGates pic.twitter.com/yunFAxWb0n
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) May 8, 2020
Gates has apparently decided that it is time to speak out about the Trump Administration’s handling of the coronavirus. On Thursday, she gave an interview to Politico in which she praised Germany’s response and said that there has been a “lack of a coordinated effort” in the United States.
On Friday morning, she urged caution in reopening the country, saying that she believes “we are still at the beginning stages of this pandemic, that we have seen the first part of it. To reopen we need to do far more testing and tracing and we need to be very careful and go very slowly as we reopen.”
Watch the video below:
"I feel like we are still at the beginning stages of this pandemic… to reopen we need to do far more testing and tracing," says @melindagates on the current state of the coronavirus pandemic. pic.twitter.com/j7fF0P1zqo
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) May 8, 2020
In early March, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation teamed up with a few other charities to pledge to donate $125 million to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
