Bill Gates’s long-overdue fall from grace has been a rare silver lining in an otherwise ghastly year. But he doesn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as the rest of us. Deservedly dogged by bad press for his stalwart defense of pharmaceutical profits over COVID-19 patients in poor countries, sexual harassment of Microsoft employees, and his apparently extensive ties to multimillionaire and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, Gates tried for some damage control in an interview last week with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

His friendship with Epstein was “a huge mistake,” Gates asserted. “I had several dinners with him, hoping that what he said about getting billions of philanthropy for global health, through contacts that he had, might emerge. When it looked like that wasn’t a real thing, that relationship ended. But it was a huge mistake to spend time with him, to give him the credibility of being there.”

It’s impossible to overstate how disingenuous this is. The yearslong connection Gates cultivated with Epstein — and vice versa — can hardly be described as a momentary oopsie. They were two of the richest men on Earth, meeting after Epstein had already been convicted for child sex trafficking, very intentionally scratching each other’s back and bolstering each other’s charitable endeavors. The relationship between them — and what compelled both to build one — should be seen not as a lapse in judgment but as an indictment of billionaire philanthropy itself.