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Microsoft

Melinda French Gates Decided Marriage With Bill Gates 'Just Wasn't Healthy' (cbsnews.com) 102

Posted by EditorDavid from the Stop-button dept.
"After the divorce came out, Bill Gates admitted to having an affair," writes CBS News — adding details they've learned from a new interview with Bill's ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.

"French Gates said she had thought the couple was going to work through their issues but there came a point where she realized she couldn't trust what they had. " (NBC News quotes her as saying "It wasn't one moment or one specific thing that happened. There just came a point in time where there was enough there that I realized it just wasn't healthy, and I couldn't trust what we had.")

More from CBS News: There have been reports that Bill Gates had multiple affairs during their marriage. French Gates said, "those are questions Bill needs to answer." French Gates was asked about how she felt about her former husband's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and whether that contributed to the decision to divorce. She said she made it clear that she did not like him meeting with Epstein. "As I said, it's not one thing, it was many things. But I did not like that he'd had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no," said French Gates. [In the interview Melinda French Gates adds, "I made that clear to him."]

She, herself, met Epstein one time because she wanted to "see who this man was... I regretted it from the second I stepped in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards. So, you know, my heart breaks for these young women, because that's how I felt, and here I'm an older woman. My god, I feel terrible for those young women. It was awful," French Gates said.

She said any further questions about Epstein and Gates' relationship should be addressed with Gates.

In a statement to CBS News, Bill Gates said: "Meeting with Epstein was a mistake that I regret deeply. It was a substantial error in judgement. I remain dedicated to my work at the Gates Foundation in partnership with Melinda, where our focus is to help reduce global inequities, giving every person the chance to live a healthy and productive life."
During the interview, Melinda French Gates also talks about her continuing commitment to philanthrophy. "I do believe that if you are lucky enough to be a billionaire, believe me, you can give away half of it and not change your life. And we should. We should have a society where if for whatever reason wealth is in your hands, you, you put it back in society so that you change and you lift up others."
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Melinda French Gates Decided Marriage With Bill Gates 'Just Wasn't Healthy' More

Melinda French Gates Decided Marriage With Bill Gates 'Just Wasn't Healthy'

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  • Couldn't she have done something years ago to stop this?

    • Unless something was proven at the time about Epstein all that would have happened was that hed have sued for libel , won, and got even richer.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Why isn't she asked / talking about her own infidelity?

        I worked at MS; {after she was married} and received a misdirected phone call talking about a meeting; and the meeting was not 'business'. I deleted it in hope that it would not be traced to me.
      • Speaking out could have sped up the process of Epstein & his accomplices getting investigated. Fewer young women would've been kidnapped & raped. She's probably more concerned about her own public image & she's saying it to distance herself further from the scandals. Expect this to be impeccably managed PR appearances & press releases that put the spotlight firmly on Bill Gates, i.e. "You'll have to ask Bill Gates about that." which puts him on the defensive. I guess assholes attract other a
    • I doubt she knew at the time. It's necessary now to distance yourself in the strongest terms from Epstein which is why she said this, but unless he was actively torturing kittens in front of her at the time there's no way "He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterwards" makes much sense. He'd just be yet another one of a million random high-flyers she was obliged to rub shoulders with, nothing more, nothing less.
      • No. I don't accept that. People talk & if you suspect something, it's not that hard to find out discreetly, given the considerable resources & connections at her disposal. If she really wanted to do the right thing, she easily could have.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Corbets ( 169101 )

          “Given the resources available to her”

          So you’re expecting that if she feels she doesn’t like someone, she should hire private investigators to track down evidence that they’re pedophiles, just because she’s rich and can?

          • If she suspected they were paedophiles, yes. Wouldn't you if you could easily do it? It's the old saying, 'In order for evil to succeed, it's only necessary that good people do nothing.'

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dryeo ( 100693 )

              She probably met lots of creepy people. those rich circles are full of them. And considering that Epstein wasn't actually a pedophile, which means being attracted to actual children, people who haven't hit puberty, she wouldn't have found evidence of it, though she may have found evidence of abusing very young women.
              Do you investigate every creep you encounter? Personally, I avoid them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Would probably have cost her a lot of money. This person is not the paragon of virtue she now pretends to be.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Done what? Reported to the authorities that she met a really rich man and she felt that he was a creep? She had a bad feeling about him? Unless she outright witnessed sex trafficking that would be all she had - the feeling that the guy was a sleaze she'd be best off staying far away from.

  • Apparently his name is still healthy.
  • She was talking about Epstein but what about Bill?

  • There is not much footage of Epstein available. No talking, no nothing.

  • So (Score:2)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 )

    Gates doesnt live up to the Mr Nice Guy image hes been trying to cultivate for the last decade or so after all. Whod have thought. I guess like everyone else hes flawed and complicated, good and bad in various measures.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      It's really blatantly obvious he's been "encouraging" people to shill for him, too. Every time Raymond Chen writes a puff piece about how great Bill was to have around, I wonder how much he's been paid for it.

      • All of those "what bill gates has been reading" posts and "bill gates takes the ice bucket challenge" are, in my opinion. crafted by a PR firm to improve his likeability and image.

      • Every time Raymond Chen writes a puff piece about how great Bill was to have around, I wonder how much he's been paid for it.

        It's probably sincere. Gates actually cared about making a good product, and respected smart people (like Chen).

        Whereas the sociopaths who ran Microsoft after Gates left were miserable to work with, leaving Chen (and any sane person) nostalgic for the time when Gates was in charge.

  • Clearly slashdot is no longer "news for nerds, stuff that matters", having taken that moniker off the website.

    But seriously, this is ridiculous.

    I don't give a flying fork of the state of Bill Gates marriage or whether he divorced, what has this site become? People magazine?

    FFS!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Dear high-UID user,

      You obviously haven't been a Slashdot reader long enough to know what "news for nerds, stuff that matter" means. Nor that Slashdot have a long history of reporting on anything related to Microsoft and/or Bill Gates, to the extent that Bill himself has adorned one section of Slashdot.

      If you do not care about some articles you are free to skip over them. But if you are to complain about what a website writes about, a website you do not pay a single cent to visit, the rest of us are in our r

      • Complaining about the stories is as old as slashdot.

      • Dear high-UID user,

        You obviously haven't been a Slashdot reader long enough to know what "news for nerds, stuff that matter" means. Nor that Slashdot have a long history of reporting on anything related to Microsoft and/or Bill Gates, to the extent that Bill himself has adorned one section of Slashdot.

        If you do not care about some articles you are free to skip over them. But if you are to complain about what a website writes about, a website you do not pay a single cent to visit, the rest of us are in our right to tell you where the door are or tell you to stop complaining.

        FFS!

        Hmmm. I've been a slashdot reader for over 20 years.
        I also don't post as an Anonymous Coward.

        This story isn't "news that matters" in any shape or form - it's classic "celeb" bullshit news, about the state of someone's marital affairs.

    • Have you actually looked at the main page? The title is "Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters". That's hardly "taken off the website".

      • It used to be a banner image. I rarely look at the full title of a tab - my bad, didn't see it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      I don't give a flying fork of the state of Bill Gates marriage or whether he divorced, what has this site become? People magazine?

      Like everything that's run for-profit and not the personal love-child of someone with an actual interest (beyond $$$) - yes. It'll run whatever story the editors believe will get them clicks and thus ad impressions.

      It's sad, but it's the world we live in.

  • "So Melinda, when were you first attracted to the billionaire Bill Gates?"
  • This kind of shit is for gossipy housewives.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by uufnord ( 999299 )
      Oh, you're so right. Now where are my Bon-bons and the TV remote? It's time to watch The View.
  • All those millions of dollars that she didn't have to lift a finger for... Life must have been so terrible for her. If only she had married a fast food worker instead, her life would have been so much better.

  • Eating does not make you fat.

    Marriage makes you fat.

    Compare the waistlines of your single and married friends for proof.

    So . . . just measure the waistlines of Gates and his Ex-Wife . . .

    . . . adjust the alimony accordingly . . .

  • Stuff does doesn't matter.

  • Private affairs WHO gives a FUCK?

    I don’t have any to give

  • News for nerds, stuff that matters?

  • Look, you have to be Sheldon Cooper-level unable to read human emotions and body language to not take one look at Bill Gates and think he's a creepy, creepy dude. Combine that with his arrogant, egotistical, megalomaniacal and greedy behavior, and you have a recipe for people saying they can see ol' Billy Gates doing a lot of things if it makes him money or gives him worldly pleasures.

    Do I believe he probably banged some 17 year old Epstein had with him? Absolutely. He looks, lives and acts like the real wo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      Same deal with the vaccines. I literally don't care where you stand on the vaccines themselves. Gates has been a vocal, full-throated advocate of aggressively reducing the world's population.

      Citation needed.

      However, you don't see any billionaire Mr. Rogers's, and only a few even try to cultivate some kind of passable-as-not-a-psychopath [youtube.com] public image. Of those, I'd say Buffett is the best.

      • Well, you don't see many Mr. Rogerses at all.

        Why do so many rich people do abhorrent creepy shit? Because they have the time and money to do it.

  • Knowing about what has transpired between these two is unlikely to further my understanding of Microsoft products or shed any light on solutions to issues which I may have with those products. Actually, this has no bearing whatsoever on any technical topic which will inform or enlighten what I thought was the target audience of slashdot.

    • Knowing about what has transpired between these two is unlikely to further my understanding of Microsoft products

      Well, it does explain where Microsoft Bob and Clippy came from, although you are unlikely to need to support those anymore.

  • Seeing as how he was hanging out with a massive pervert like Epsteen I can only agree with her assessment.
  • C'mon Slashdot, do better.

  • I'm dead serious.

    Ok I know this isn't tech news but this site has drifted away from that focus a decade or more ago.

    My actual question is broader: as a person drinking his coffee in the porch on a Sunday morning, why would I possibly care about the details of a relationship between two people I don't know? Why would anyone? I don't care if their shoes are comfortable today either, I expect them likewise to sort that shit out to their own satisfaction themselves, no?

    I barely care about the personal relati

    • Assuming this isn't a troll, even minor children is off the table. People can only have so much empathy and its usually reserved for family and those around them. Something as stupid as saying "I have a black friend" implies not "I am not racist" but "I *think* I understand the troubles of the average black person" However, this doesn't mean that somone knows what its like to say walk into a convenience store and have stare that your going to rob the place, being avoided by people on the street or even a

      • >rags to riches

        Actually, born into a really well off family by Seattle area standards.

        • I was present when bill was asked by a reporter what age he was when he made his first million. He paused for a minute, and then with a small smile said "When I was born". Interview was in 1986; i was an employee of microsoft at the time.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tragedy ( 27079 )

            He paused for a minute, and then with a small smile said "When I was born".

            Which is absolutely true. His grandfather set up a trust fund for him. I mean, he is William Gates the _third_ after all. More than just the money he had from birth, there's his family connections. It's relatively well known that Microsoft was under consideration to provide an OS for IBM because his mother was on a corporate board with a guy who was also on the board of IBM. I'm constantly baffled when people seem to think that people like Gates and Trump and so forth are self-made men who pulled themselves

  • I am disgusted by the suggestion that Bill Gates was using Epstein to get underage girls, it is far more likely that Bill wanted Epstein to lend him some money or introduce Bill to important people.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cwatts ( 622605 )

      Bill Gates wanted to borrow money from Jeffrey Epstein.... that's rich.

      Gates is worth upwards of 130 billion and Epstein was worth just over half a billion when they found him dead.

      lololol
      cw

  • Is marriage with a nerd ever healthy? I mean, come on.

  • How DARE she slander our dear Bill, genious creator of the brilliant DOS and Windows, astute businessman building up Microsoft through hard work and perseverance???

    She's probably unvaxxinated too, the savage.

    • I don't know who you're lampooning. I suspect you don't either.

      • Well, at least you caught on to the irony, as opposed to others who professed complete obliviousness regarding the origin of the Whoosh. A pity for the snark - was that a knee-jerk reaction to a suspicion that you may have been a co-target?

    • Bill didn't write DOS. Tim Patterson did. Bill wasn't the technical guy at microsoft. That was Paul Allen. Bill was the marketing guy.

      • Bill didn't write DOS. Tim Patterson did. Bill wasn't the technical guy at microsoft. That was Paul Allen. Bill was the marketing guy.

        Wow, it must have taken a lot to miss OP's irony as wide as that. In other news, Jeremy Clarkson didn't invent cars.

    • "genious" ? Is that the opposite of ingenuous? Figures.

  • Who the %&?# cares (Score:3)

    by peppepz ( 1311345 ) on Sunday March 06, 2022 @10:20AM (#62330919)
    I apologize in advance, normally I don't understand people who post comments under a slashdot story only to say that they aren't interested or that it isn't "news for nerds".

    But... the marital squabbles of Bill Gates and his ex-wife? Really, why should it interest anyone besides the two?

    • You don't have to live under the smug alert in the PNW. For a generation Bill could do no wrong. He even once got an unsung hero award. It may only be schadenfreude, but as someone who has seen our taxes go up constantly and seen him get away with paying little or no taxes in this state, I have no sympathy for him, or her.
      • I recall a Usenet post or copied anecdote claiming that (long ago) Gates was in a grocery checkout line fumbling to pay for ice cream, so the guy behind him paid just to get the line moving. I have only been in the same room with him once, at the World Altair Computer Convention. He was shrieky and most of the audience were upset at not having received copies of BASIC that we had paid for.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • What generation would that be? As long as I've known him Gates was considered a world-class asshole. .... When was he thought of as someone who could do no wrong?

          Outside of nerdy circles, he has been considered a saint/genius from DOS days up until the Epstein connection became known, and by most people even after that. I have been seriously flamed on other forums for daring to say he isn't some kind of god. Just Google for "Bill Gates" and you will find admiration for him everywhere.

          Gates is a nasty self-centred person. Allen said working with him was hell. If it were not for his lucky break with IBM (his mother knew a board member) he would have been an obn

    • Agreed. Stupid mindless gossip is undoubtedly a new low for Slashdot.

  • If you want to see how mature grown-ups handle these kinds of things. What a load of bullshit.

  • Sure, there's evidence that Bill was a philanderer. Big deal. I can probably hit ten with a rock in a semi-crowded grocery store.

    However... there's never been any suggestion that he has ever been a predator. Same goes for Trump. He might want to fuck his daughter, but it's the grown up version he's interested in.

    Both probably regret their association with Epstein, but if I were a betting man (and I occasionally am), the odds are neither availed themselves of the sample pack.

  • Clippy: Say, it looks like you’re filing for a Divorce! Should I Open Excel for you?

  • believe me, you can give away half of it and not change your life.

    There are people who won't give away anything, because they know how to use it and that changes for the better lives of millions

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