US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would put a hold on America’s funding to the World Health Organization, accusing it of becoming China-centric during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
We’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see. It’s a great thing if it works. But when they call every shot wrong, that’s no good, Trump told reporters at his daily White House news conference.
Geneva-headquartered World Health Organization, receives vast amounts of money from the United States.
We pay for a majority or the biggest portion of their money. They actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time I did it. They were wrong. They’ve been wrong about a lot of things. They had a lot of information early and they didn’t want to — they’re very — they seem to be very China centric, Trump charged during his news conference.
Trump said his administration is going to look into the US funding to the WHO.
The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020
We give a majority of the money that they get, and it’s much more than the USD58 million. USD58 million is a small portion of what they’ve got over the years. Sometimes they get much more than that. Sometimes it’s for programs that they’re doing, and-it’s much bigger numbers. If the programs are good, that’s great as far as we’re concerned, he added.
But we want to look into it, World Health Organization, because they called it wrong. They (WHO) called it wrong. They missed the call. They could’ve called it months earlier. They would have known and they should have known and they probably did know. So, we’ll be looking into that very carefully, and we’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO, Trump said.
Meanwhile, Senator Jim Risch, chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for an independent investigation into the WHO handling of the COVID-19 response.
The WHO has failed not only the American people, it has failed the world with its flagrant mishandling of the response to COVID-19, said Risch.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’ apparent unwillingness to hold the Chinese Communist Party to even the minimum standard of global health and transparency hindered the world’s ability to blunt the spread of this pandemic. It is completely unacceptable that the world’s global health organization has become a political puppet of the Chinese government, he alleged.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020
An independent investigation into the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 response is imperative,” he asserted.
The United States is the largest contributor to the WHO.
Our valuable tax payer dollars should go towards investments to prevent the spread of disease, not to aid and abet cover-ups that cost lives and isolate portions of the world’s population on political grounds, as has been the case with Taiwan, Senator Risch said.
A bipartisan group of nearly two dozen lawmakers on Tuesday announced Tuesday to introduce a resolution to defund the WHO until its Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus resigns and an international commission investigates the organisation’s role in covering up the Chinese Communist Party’s failed COVID-19 response.
The WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party hide the threat of COVID-19 from the world and now more than 10,000 Americans are dead, a number that is expected to rise dramatically in the coming weeks, Congressman Guy Reschenthaler alleged.
The United States is the largest contributor to WHO. It is not right that Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars are being used to propagate China’s lies and hide information that could have saved lives. This bill will hold the WHO accountable for their negligence and deceit, he asserted.
The United States’ intelligence community has reported that the Chinese government hid the threat of COVID-19 and, as a result, made it difficult for the rest of the world to respond early, appropriately and aggressively, said Congressman Fred Keller.
For reasons beyond understanding, the World Health Organization acted as a silent partner in this effort instead of protecting the lives of millions across the world, including hundreds of thousands of American citizens. Our hard-earned tax dollars should not go to a global organization more concerned with not offending the Chinese government than providing accurate information and protecting innocent lives, Keller said.
Senator Marco Rubio ACCUSED The Chinese Communist Party of using WHO “to mislead the world.”
The organisation’s leadership is either complicit or dangerously incompetent. I will work with the Trump Administration to ensure that WHO is independent and has not been compromised by the CCP before we continue our current funding, he added.
WHO REACTS
The WHO responded Wednesday to President Donald Trump’s threat to cut its funding, saying the move would not be appropriate during the global coronavirus pandemic.
“We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding,” Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a virtual briefing, according to Reuters.
A day earlier, Trump threatened to withhold funding from the United Nations’ health agency, claiming it got “every aspect” of the coronavirus pandemic wrong.“With regard to us, they’re taking a lot of heat because they didn’t want the borders closed, they called it wrong,” Trump said at his daily briefing. “They really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong.”
As of Wednesday, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. surpassed 400,000, according to figures provided by NBC, with 12,864 fatalities nationwide.
It’s uncertain how the U.S. would withhold funding. Congress has already authorized $122 million for the WHO for this fiscal year, and while Trump has proposed only $58 million of funding in fiscal year 2021, Congress is unlikely to authorize such a drastic funding cut, especially in the the middle of the pandemic.
The president also criticized the WHO’s initial response to the outbreak, which originated in Wuhan in China in late 2019, and the time it took to declare the outbreak a global pandemic, on March 11.
“Take a look, go through step by step. They said there’s no big deal, there’s no big problem. There’s no nothing, and then ultimately when I closed it down, they said I made a mistake in closing it down and it turned out to be right,” Trump said.
The WHO declared a global health emergency on Jan. 30, nearly a month before Trump tweeted that “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
Before his White House news conference, Trump lambasted the WHO on Twitter, calling it “China centric.”
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