President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday during the White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing that he has ordered his administration to halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) over its failure to investigate and accurately report on the coronavirus outbreak in China.
“Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the Coronavirus. Everybody knows what’s going on there,” Trump said. “American taxpayers provided between $400 million and $500 million per year to the W.H.O. In contrast China contributes $40 million a year and even less as the organization’s leading sponsor.”
“The United States has a duty to insist on full accountability, one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the W.H.O. was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations,” Trump continued. “They were very much opposed to what we did. Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China, saving untold numbers of lives. Thousands and thousands of people would have died. Had other nations likewise suspended travel from China countless more lives would have been saved. Instead, look at the rest of the world and look at parts of Europe. Other nations and regions who followed W.H.O. guidelines and kept their borders open to China accelerated the pandemic all around the world.”
“With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible,” Trump continued. “The reality is that the W.H.O. failed to adequately obtain, vet, and share information in a timely and transparent fashion. The world depends on the W.H.O. to work with countries to ensure that accurate information about international health threats is shared in a timely manner, and, if it’s not, to independently tell the world the truth about what is happening.”
“The W.H.O. failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable,” Trump continued. “The W.H.O. Failed to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts. There was credible information to suspect human to human transmission in December 2019, which should have spurred the W.H.O. to investigate and investigate immediately. Through the middle of January, it parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human to human happening despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary.”
Last week, Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News that the WHO was a “co-conspirator” with the Chinese Communist Party in the cover-up of the outbreak in Wuhan.
“There is a case to be made here that this is the worst cover-up in human history. This is a cover-up by the Chinese Communist Party, which has now led to one of the worst pandemics we’ve ever seen,” McCaul said. “The World Health Organization did not protect the world from this pandemic and I consider them to be co-conspirators with the Chinese Communist Party.”
