> Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates reflected on a recent dinner he had with President-elect Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, saying **he was “impressed” by the former president**. > “I had a chance, about two weeks ago, to go have a long and actually quite intriguing dinner with him,” Gates told WSJ editor-in-chief Emma Tucker. > Gates said the discussion during the dinner, which Susie Wiles, the incoming White House chief of staff, also attended, focused on innovation in the global health sphere. **Trump reportedly got “pretty excited” as they discussed the potential development of a cure for HIV and polio mitigation efforts**. > “**He, in the Covid days, accelerated the vaccine innovation,**” Gates said, according to WSJ. “So I was asking him if maybe the same kind of thing could be done here, and we both got, I think, pretty excited about that.”