The pandemic may have been beneficial to the bank accounts of billionaires, but the same cannot be said for their marriages — or at least one in particular.
As news broke around the world that Bill and Melinda Gates had ended their 27-year-marriage, the question on most people’s lips was how it would play out financially given the Microsoft mogul’s $124 billion fortune.
“Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives,” the Gates’ official statement read.
“We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue to work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”
As many of us theorised about how much money Melinda would walk away with and made comparisons between this breakup and that of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his ex MacKenzie Scott, the QAnon community were deducing, as always, that something far more nefarious was at play.
It makes sense that the conspiracy theorists would make a mountain out of a crumbled marital molehill, given they are the group who concocted the theory that Bill had created COVID-19 in order to then make more billions from a vaccine that was actually a microchip and…something to do with 5G?
Then, there were the really extreme believers who supported the theory that the Gates’ had actually been arrested and executed some time ago and that any public appearances by the pair were actually made by CGI clones. The people who believed this component of the rambling conspiracy had the Q message boards alight with comments claiming that the divorce was merely a cover-up for the fact the couple are already dead. Errr, okay. Sure.
Another convert took to the Great Awakening message board to argue that the split was an obvious move to protect the couple’s vast fortune when Bill gets arrested — referring to the QAnon belief that the Gates’ are part of an elite cabal of Satan-worshipping child traffickers who will be brought to justice by none other than former US President Donald Trump.
If you’re thinking to yourself “But hang on, I thought you just said these people believe that the Gates’ had already been arrested (and executed) so how can they also believe that he is about to be arrested too?” — then you just summed up QAnon in a nutshell.
It’s worth noting that the conspiracy theorists were relegated to sharing this conjecture on platforms such as Twitch, Gab and Telegram, having been banned from mainstream platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram after instigating the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill in the US.
“So now that Bill (loser) Gates and his wife are being split apart, I just have that gut feeling that she is probably not going to be alive for much longer considering she knows TOO MUCH about his evil plans!” one Gab user wrote.
“If I have to guess, the globalists will probably try to pull off an Epstein ‘suicide’ or just make her ‘disappear’, but that’s just my suspicion!”
In reality, Melinda Gates filed for divorce from her husband of almost three decades on May 3rd, 2021, saying that “spousal support is not needed”. The pair did not have a prenuptial agreement.
“We ask the court to dissolve our marriage and find that our marital community ended on the date stated in our separation contract,” she said in the petition for divorce.
Bill and Melinda Gates met at a Microsoft work dinner, where Melinda beat Bill at a maths game. They married in Hawaii in 1994 and have since committed billions of dollars in philanthropic projects around the world, including $1.75 billion to fight the pandemic.
Speaking to Reuters in January 2021, Bill addressed the QAnon conspiracy theories about him, saying “Nobody would have predicted that I and Dr. Fauci would be so prominent in these really evil theories,” Gates said.
“I’m very surprised by that. I hope it goes away.”
Better keep hoping, Bill.
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