Melinda French Gates, the ex-wife of Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, said this week she plans to vote for President Joe Biden in the November election.
During an appearance on “CBS Mornings” this week, French Gates was asked by Gayle King, the co-host of the show, whether she would decide to endorse or campaign on behalf of a presidential candidate this year.
She responded:
“More than likely, yes.”
King then asked her if she would share who the person “might be,” and she responded quickly:
“Well, I don’t think it would be any surprise. I think — first of all, I think it’s really important to say that I have voted in some elections Republican and some elections Democratic.
“But, in this election, I cannot vote for a man who rolls back women’s reproductive rights and says the heinous things that he says about women. So, I absolutely am not voting for [Republican Donald] Trump, and I will vote for Biden.”
French Gates doubled down on those statements by saying that women need to show up in November to the polls just like they did during the midterm elections in 2022 and make a difference. She commented:
“It is going to come down in this election — it will come down to the women turning out in the battleground states. They … women turned out in the midterm elections and said, ‘This is enough,’ and we’ve got to do it again.”
French Gates is a billionaire and a staunch advocate for reproductive rights. Just last month, she committed $1 billion to some women’s causes.
She also celebrated the recent decision the Supreme Court handed down last week that upheld access to mifepristone, an abortion medication. At the same time, French Gates believes that there still remains a much bigger fight for women’s reproductive rights that’s going on.
Following the high court ruling, French Gates wrote on X:
“Today’s Supreme Court decision is welcome news, but the right for reproductive rights is far from over. Someone else will file a lawsuit. Another state will pass legislation restricting women’s opinions.”
Over the last two years, reproductive rights have shot up to be one of the most important political topics in the country, ever since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and, with it, federal protections for abortion.
Trump took a lot of credit for his role in the decision, since he was able to successfully appoint three justices to the Supreme Court during his time in the White House, which shifted the scales to a conservative majority.
That’s something that the Biden campaign has actually tried to use to its advantage. In many campaign ads and messaging, they have linked Trump to abortion bans that have happened at the state level since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The president’s campaign has also warned that if Trump were to win the White House this November, even more restrictions could be put on reproductive rights — and many other rights as well.
