Clinton Presidential Center "Transcript: Today Show Interview on Fighting AIDS in Africa"

Campbell Brown (audio track): Frankly, when they travel together, they make an odd threesome. The outgoing former president dives into crowds, while Bill and Melinda Gates, who are far more reserved, hang back. But the three of them are making enormous commitments to fight AIDS in Africa. During our interview, they take us to hospitals and research facilities they are funding there.

Campbell Brown (interview): When you see a place like this clinic, or the place we went and visited this morning, do you feel a sense of accomplishment or also a sense of urgency?

President Clinton: Both.

Cambell Brown: That there’s so much to be done?

Melinda Gates: Absolutely both — and a sense of hope. I mean you come to a place like this [a clinic], and you see these patients who want to get tested, because they have hope, because there are medicines available. That’s completely different than just a few years ago.

Campbell Brown (audio track): It is Melinda Gates who has been the Gates Foundation’s driving force. But her husband recently shocked the business world by announcing he’ll join her full-time, putting Microsoft on the backburner.

Campbell Brown [to Bill Gates]: Why now? What was the trigger point?

Bill Gates: You know I — I love both things. But I decided that Microsoft had great people. And that these issues were pressing.

Campbell Brown: Some reluctance?

Bill Gates: Well, I’m reluctant to give up — some of — I’ll only be part-time doing great software. And that’s been my life’s work. And I’m sure I’m gonna miss that. But I get to fill it in with another thing that excites me — and challenges me.

Campbell Brown: Talk to me about working together so closely on this.

Melinda Gates: Well, it’s great fun to be able to work with your prime partner on something like this, that you feel so deeply about.

Campbell Brown: Do you debate ...

Bill Gates: Both thinking about it ...

Campbell Brown: Do you debate?

Bill Gates: Oh sure.

Campbell Brown: About who gets what?

Bill Gates: [Laughter] Well, you know we discuss which projects, which people … You know how to deal with things when they don’t work. There’s plenty to talk about.

Campbell Brown (audio track): While the Gateses’ focus primarily is on funding research to prevent diseases, Clinton has focused on treating AIDS patients and negotiating lower prices for AIDS drugs for patients in poor countries. His close friend Nelson Mandela asked for his help.

President Clinton: When I came to Africa in my second term, I saw how much denial there still was, how much of a crying need [there was], and how many people were needlessly dying. And I listened to [Mandela] talk about it. And he’d tell me that, when he left office, that was what he was going to do. We started together. I mean, literally as soon as I walked out the door of the White House, he asked me to work with him.

Campbell Brown (audio track): One of the Clinton Foundation’s greatest success stories is a new hospital in the countryside of Rwanda. Clinton is giving special attention to this place. He says he is still haunted by the genocide that happened here in 1994 and is trying to atone, in some way, for not acting to stop the killing.

President Clinton: Part of it is I want to spend the rest of my life making up for a decision I didn’t make and that I regret [not making]. But as they all say — if you talk to them — they’ll say, “Well, at least Bill Clinton apologized. Nobody else ever did. And, after all, we did do this to ourselves. Nobody made us do this.”