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Bill Gates and Elizabeth Warren are tweeting at each other about wealth inequality

Bill Gates and Elizabeth Warren are tweeting at each other about wealth inequality

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Maybe they’ll have a beer summit?

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Bill Gates 2012

Bill Gates and Elizabeth Warren are tweeting at each other — and it seems possible they could have an IRL conversation soon.

But let’s first back up to why they’re @-ing each other. Yesterday, the Microsoft co-founder was interviewed at The New York Times’ DealBook Conference. The very first thing CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Gates was his position on Warren’s proposed 6 percent wealth tax on billionaires, which is designed to help pay for Medicare for All.

As part of his response, he discusses how a wealth tax could affect him, and if he’s ever met with Elizabeth Warren:

His comment about paying over $10 billion in taxes can only be described as a tax flex (he seemed to be joking, but maybe not really). And he didn’t seem confident that Warren would want to sit down with him.

Here’s a video of his comments, with the tweeted quotes coming in just after the six-minute mark:

Well, last night Elizabeth Warren tweeted to say that, actually, she’d be happy to discuss her wealth tax further with Gates:

And this morning, Gates tweeted back — though he doesn’t exactly agree to meet up. But he at least sounds interested in having some kind of conversation with Warren to discuss how to fight wealth inequality:

So, it doesn’t seem as if the Elizabeth Warren Bill Gates Wealth Inequality Beer Summit Extravaganza will be happening imminently — but perhaps the two will talk soon. Since they’re already chatting on Twitter, maybe they’ll just keep tweeting back and forth, because that’s a thing a Democratic candidate and one of the richest men in the world will do in 2019.

Update November 7th, 5:54PM ET: Linked to a different video of Bill Gates’ comments, as the one we originally linked to was made private.