Yesterday it was reporters. Today, the finger of blame is pointed at the World Health Organization. Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States, in the middle of a pandemic, was withdrawing funding from the World Health Organization. Trump blamed the organization for “severely mismanaging and covering up the crisis.” The New York Times writes:
The announcement came as Mr. Trump continued to be angered by criticism of his response to the pandemic and as he sought to gain credit for how he has performed. “Everybody knows what is going on there,” he said, blaming the organization for what he described as a “disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations.”
Bloomberg writes Trump believes The Who is too close to cozy with Beijing:
“The outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death,” the president said. “So much death has been caused by their mistakes.”
“The WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has become a pariah among some Trump supporters. They’ve sought to blame the pandemic on the organization as scrutiny of the president’s actions has increased and public approval of his handling of the crisis has fallen. They accuse the WHO and Tedros in particular of being too accommodating to Beijing and of failing to adequately warn the world of the threat posed by the virus, which first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan.“
Trump didn’t mention in his White House remarks that U.S. intelligence warned of coronavirus as early as November, 2019. He also didn’t mention that thousands of passengers traveled to the U.S. from China after the ban.
According to The W.H.O. website, the U.S. will pay the organization $57.9 million in 2020.