Buffett may end donations to Gates charity over Bill’s ties to Epstein

BECKY QUICK: Warren, welcome. It is wonderful to see you this morning.

WARREN BUFFETT: It is fun to be on.

QUICK: You are on for an interesting reason.

For 22 years, you had been holding an annual luncheon — an auction for a luncheon — to benefit the Glide Foundation in San Francisco.

You retired from that – from doing that — back in 2022 after you’d raised more than 50 million dollars. I think the last auction that you raised — that you did — raised – 19 million —

BUFFETT: 19 million.

QUICK: — one hundred dollars [$19,000,100] for the Glide Foundation.

And you kind of hung it up and said that was going to be the end.

You are back with a new announcement today that there is a new auction that is coming, with a twist.

This time it’s Warren Buffett, Stephen Curry and Ayesha Curry, and they’re going to be having a new luncheon to benefit not only the Glide Foundation, but the Currys’ foundation as well, which is, Eat, Learn, Play.

And this auction is going to be held May 7th. It starts at 7:30pm Pacific time. It closes on May 14 at 7:30pm exactly.

And all of the benefits of that is going to go to benefit these two foundations, Glide and the Eat, Learn, Play Foundation.

How did this come about? Why did you unretire from this?

BUFFETT: Well, let me tell you first how I got into it, because my first wife, Susie, was living in San Francisco and she said to me, this guy is real. (Laughs) And — and —

QUICK: This guy being Cecil.

BUFFETT: Cecil. Yeah, Cecil Williams, who came to that church in 1963. And it was a dying church in a changing part of the neighborhood in San Francisco. And they weren’t glad to see him, the hundred or so parishioners that were left.

But he turned it into something that became — it gave hope and life to people that the world had given up on.

And I went on Sunday still expecting something less than that — (laughs) — and I watched Cecil, and I could see what he was doing, and he was for real.

And so, Susie, at some point, said, why don’t you do something to raise some money for him? You know, and so, I think she actually selected the idea of the lunch, and then we did the lunch.

The first three lunches brought 25 thousand dollars each because they were localized. And then we got the idea of going on eBay. And then we started getting bids from around the world.

And it just generally kept moving up, although it wasn’t every single year, but it just — it just put us on the map.

And as the final amount, 19 million, was raised — now that was kind of raised because it was the last one, I think. I was doing (inaudible) that had bought an earlier lunch, but I didn’t make any calls to him or do anything. He just turned out to be — it inspires people. And Smith & Wollensky, as you know, covered it in New York sometimes.

QUICK: That’s often where you had the lunch with the winners of this.

BUFFETT: And some of them wanted to be anonymous. And a couple came to Omaha along the line because they had some special thing…