noon to 3 p.m. eastern on booktv on c-span2. >> and next up a conversation with microsoft founder bill gates who sat down with politico to discuss his upcoming meeting with president trump and the importance of foreign aid it was shown as much as again until the marine corps commandant starts at about 1:10 p.m. eastern. [applause] >> thanks a lot. >> thank you. >> all right. thank you so much for being you today. we are excited to cook off the conversation. wanted to just take a step back about what you are doing here, what your message is. >> why are you here? >> talk to us about what is a messenger bring to washington on this trip. >> my full-time work is at the gates foundation, and we have

two big things we focus on. one is u.s. education. the other is global health. the u.s. government is a key partner in both of those activities. in the case of the health work, for all the diseases we work on, the nih is either the biggest funder or the second-biggest funder, and likewise we are either the second or first biggest funder. making sure that research helps us understand how to work better. and in terms of foreign aid, the overall foreign aid is 130 billion. the u.s. is the biggest single country at about 30 billion of that. as a percentage of our a cut and it's quite a bit lower than some others, .22 versus the europeans, some above 1%, norway, sweden. some above .7 like germany and the uk but it is a huge pool of

resources. far greater, our foundation is about 5 billion a year. we need to partner up with all the donors to go after things like polio eradication, the pepfar program on hiv is absolutely miraculous in terms of holding that disease can check for us to get a vaccine. a lot of the discussion is either with the congress of money allocated to these things or with the executive branch on the execution of these things. >> i'm back here four times a year. >> when the white house daily guidance came out last night, we learned that you are visiting the president today, this afternoon. talk about your experience with the president and what your message is going into the white house. >> i think this is a fairly interesting time because -- [laughing]

>> yes, it is. >> budgetwise -- [laughing] since the was a demand to get the defense budget off and the nondefense not late too far behind, the defense overall would be making a 12% increase, assuming the omnibus passes without some big change, and that's pretty unusual speeders more than almost any time in the last decade. >> and more in the next decade. the discussion about okay, of that 12% increase, what are the problems? this is this is a serious amounf money. 143 billion a year, that's like 30 times greater than what our foundation gets, so it's like 30 date foundations, a measure.

so the idea of okay, where should that go, you know, is a transport, education? hearing how people are thinking about that, where does the decision to break down the 12 12 bills, where does that get me? you know, the best ideas from political groups. the good news for the area of greatest concern for us, which is that foreign aid budget, is it means that at least for two years the normal discussion about hey, where does visually go, and isn't some of this not spend perfectly and can someone else do this for us? that challenge would be far less. often when they come here it's because i get to go to africa and see pepfar work or the

president's malaria initiative, and i can come back and say we really are measuring this stuff. here's how we improve it. there's a huge benefit to the u.s. from a long way in terms of having a stable africa, and talking about the measurement way that we make sure the money that we spend together with the u.s. government, we make sure that's spent as best as a candy. >> i just want to talk about the budget for a second, and you alluded to this. in one week the budget needs to be passed or else the government will shut down which we don't anticipate. if you could wave a wand and get one or two things done, or get congress to do one or two things, what would those be? >> well, , it's always important to remember -- >> you can't wave a wand. >> right. congress allocates money and makes policies, the private sector and science deliver most

of the miracles. and yet those to do need to go together, the internet was funded by darpa which is part of the defense budget. most of the great biological advances that have been made or because the u.s. taxpayers are so generous with the nih. .. i i agreed will is a-ok with

understanding and get rid of malnutrition and congress is super important, but america will still required to hands-on sort of protector peace as well. >> when you think about your meeting with the president can know what the best case scenario? what would be the a+ meeting saying i did this come i'm going to go on and traveled to africa appeared >> clear messages. one is about foreign aid, where we are partnering with the government. to articulate why even if you look at the benefit to america of stability, disease, being less likely to come here, that this is very beneficial and having the foreign relationships, maintaining that commitment, but there's great things that are coming out of

that. that has been my primary message. because of the budget increase coming second message for me would be that there is an opportunity to take some tough problems. one that i would highlight is the preparedness we have for pandemic or bioterrorism pandemic. we don't have the tools, preparedness, capacity to deal with that. and yet the science is a point where for a fairly small portion of that increase, you could do something quite miraculous in terms of security. there is a specific way to fund a little complicated because the civilian side of the defense by both need to work together to achieve that. so to see if you can get excited

about that is something to prioritize. >> let's be clear. the president has said, has treated him said in other settings that foreign aid is the cause of our budget deficit in the country spends way too much on helping other countries and it's time to start helping our country. that is the message that the president has said multiple times in multiple venues. react to that. how do you get a president who is allergic it seems to some of these ideas? >> part of it is so obscure that people bring it up even in the negative sense. and then, having the chance to explain to people that it is less than 1% the u.s. budget. and often when you hear that word, you don't connect saving

lives of hiv medicine. president bush and a very bipartisan way, the program if you add the malaria piece to it is about eight alien dollars a year. a big part of the 30 billion is that specific disease work. if you explain to add to them and should we continue so that disease doesn't get out of control and get a vaccine, which then will enable us to and the hiv epidemic. people respond very positively. and so, if people could go on trips with me and see these things. >> they could. you could invite them. >> there's a lot more voters than seats on my playing. absolutely members of congress

to go and see this work. people like lindsey graham are very active in encouraging colleagues to go out and i think that is why many elements of foreign aid has continued to have this very, very strong response. now that didn't stop an executive budget proposal from including potential trust, in that case the congress really didn't consider seriously cutting that money because they do have the commitment to it. >> the america first writer. i mean, kind of what your whole mission in the world is the case. >> i don't agree with the american first rhetoric. that is, i think the alliances we have built over time and helpfully provided countries, uplifting them, starting with the marshall plan, supporting

the united nations come in the bilateral we do. we have made the world a more stable, richer place and i think that is good from a humanitarian point of view. i do think foreign aid because it is so small that we pick things that are so affect it that even if they benefit americans, americans don't want how pandemics and they don't want to create stability in africa appeared we spend over $600 billion a year on defense and $30 billion about a 20 to one ratio. the european country, the ratio is actually pretty close. so you know, we are very much a hard powered country. we are going to exercise out

power, wanting to make sure that the soft power peace was made stronger as well. general mattis, -- it said the budget help get him more money for weapons. so, you know, i am a huge believer that framework does not say we should cut the money. >> you know, when donald trump ran for the presidency, he talked about being a businessman and that is why he was elected. do you come in your experience is running a business in a big business and creative business, do you feel it's a good sense and have anybody you've met in your time, your career prepared

you to deal with somebody like him? [laughter] >> in business you need a lot of different kinds of people and you have to be good at adapting to different styles of working. the new york real estate business or the new jersey casino business. obviously, i missed the whole approach. you find things in common that, you know i think president trump would like to take this new money and have something that makes a big difference, but it's personally exercising leadership against that. everyone should say what can you take from him that would fit that with the country's inputs and really resonate something

the presidential leadership would be important to make it happen. >> one of the questions that people are very fascinated by you and more interested in this event then any of that we've ever had. but to take a step back, what is your daily routine? what is the day in the life of bill gates? >> the foundation gets most of my time. i then spend 10% of my time at microsoft. i had a board meeting on monday tuesday. i showed some of the strategies. i do some things outside of the foundation, so a ton of on clean energy. you know, i have a vision

company and a whole bunch of energy related things. the people pulled together to finance clean energy. but most of my time is at the foundation. so we just have two weeks of strategy reviews where we go through all the things we are doing, what's going well, what's not going well. malaria, hiv, tv, we do the u.s. program that's got k-12 and higher a. two key components bear. i need to go to africa next week. i will be in chad and nigeria the entire week. i spend a lot of time in nigeria because it's a quarter of the population in sub-saharan africa appeared to challenging company

in terms of the government systems and so i'll be over there. a lot of the trips, the u.k. and germany give more than half what the u.s. does because even though the population economy are dramatically smaller, talking to them about the joint work. the biggest project that i put time on because we are in a very, very critical phase for scott three countries, nigeria, afghanistan, pakistan. the countries that have had in the last three years. if we execute well and have a little bit of luck, then that child gets paralyzed with polio at her. cop mark

>> we asked some of our readers to send us questions that they would like to ask you. we won't give you all of them, but one that is really interesting is how do you decide what areas defined? i mean, this is from a reader who said malaria, tb and polio are three things that you've worked to eradicate, but there were other diseases like hepatitis, which i'm not as familiar with these diseases in the impact, but how do you take it to your thought process? >> the two areas we want to work in and no one can work in all the other areas u.s. education and global hall. within that, we are extremely

rational about saying what can have the highest impact. [inaudible] you know, a sense of balance and we should work on cancer because you can do something well. the pharmaceutical companies with the r&d budget 20 times bigger than ours as a group are working hard on not in the incremental benefit is more on the $400,000 regime. giving more measles vaccines, so we are working mostly on infectious diseases, things with very inexpensive vaccine can be

invented and get out to people. my biggest matcher eric [inaudible] , when we get started, over 10 million died per year. that number has now been cut in half. down to 5 million died per year and that's because what we've done with vaccines and improving the primary health care system. by 2030, we will cut that in half again from 5 million a year to 2.5 million a year. it's a true progress in a dramatic way. diseases that are rare, we all work on. some big ones that we just

funded high blood pressure and africa, a group is doing that. now we are making progress, it might mean we can figure out the right treatment for invention that can help out with that. it's about 2% in nigeria are specifically due to sickle cell. the university of washington, where the understanding of what people die from coming getting the numbers right is 100 times better today than when we got started. no autopsies are done at these poor children who died. we've created a thing called a minimally invasive autopsy where

we can take a few samples, doubt, wallin and brandon have it analyzed in labs we've created in africa to get a picture of okay, what do we need to do to save these lives? >> we should take it out to one of our reporters. i don't know where they are sitting. >> hi, everybody. thank you for being here today. i'm foreign policy for "politico." my question is this. one of the reasons the trump administration gives it wanted to cut foreign aid budget substantially as they feel other countries are not doing their fair share. they say that the u.s. does more than it should. >> you can see the rest of the conversation with bill gates on our website. ted bill gates into the search box on c-span.org. now we go to the atlantic council in washington for a conversation with marine corps commandant