Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong told former advisor to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Katie Miller on her podcast that donating to charities is often a net negative for the world.
Armstrong said: “The common view is that philanthropy is like this noble cause, and you know, like, Bill Gates after the DOJ thing is like, ‘I’m going to go rehabilitate my image and do philanthropy.’”
[NOTE: The William H. Gates Foundation was started in 1994 to address health in the Pacific Northwest, and the Gates Learning Foundation was started in 1997 to bring internet access to public libraries. In 2000, Gates and his then-wife Melinda Gates merged the two and established the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.]
Armstrong added: “A lot of charities and philanthropies are actually net negative on the world and they get captured. It’s remarkably hard to find a foundation that has not gotten captured by ideology.”
He continued: “I think a lot of people, by trying to do something good like criminal justice reform or something, it turns out they just increased crime. All of these unintended consequences happen.”
Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong on leftists seizing philanthropies:
“The common view is that philanthropy is a noble cause. After the DOJ case, Bill Gates said something like, ‘I’m going to rehabilitate my image and do philanthropy.’
“I have a more contrarian view: a lot of… pic.twitter.com/GBmnx88LA4
— Katie Miller (@KatieMiller) August 26, 2026
Armstrong said that after taking his company public, financial advisors told him to start a foundation, “for various tax reasons.” But Armstrong told them, “So far, I’ve just been like, no, I’m not going to do that,” and again brought up the fear of it being “captured by ideology,” and his losing control of it.
[NOTE: Critics of Armstrong remind readers that he famously banned political activism in the Coinbase workplace, while he and the company fund right-wing political candidates, including Donald Trump.]
Armstrong used the Ford Foundation, one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States, as an example of a charity that, he says, became unaligned with its founder’s vision.
“If you look at the Ford Foundation,” Armstrong said, “I think Henry Ford would be turning over in his grave if he knew what they were up to.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, who led DOGE while Miller served as an advisor, responded to Armstrong’s comments on X and wrote, “He’s right.”
He’s right
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2026
[NOTE: In 2021, during his senatorial campaign, now Vice President JD Vance singled out the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation and said both are “fundamentally cancers on American society but they pretend to be charities, so they benefit from preferential tax treatment.” He asserted that their endowments are funding “radical left-wing ideology,” and suggested that “we should seize their assets.”]
Charitable organizations have long been targets for Republican lawmakers, who characterize their work as driven by “woke” ideology. In October 2025, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) accused the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ford Foundation of funding the Chinese Communist Party and its allies, and demanded a congressional probe.
Spokespeople for both organizations maintained they fully comply with all U.S. laws and regulations governing charitable operations and tax-exempt statuses.