DONALD Trump hammered the World Health Organization again on Friday, hinting he will be holding talks on their US funding next week. The president slammed the international organization for their handling of the COVID-19 crisis and letting China “get the better of the argument” during his White House press briefing. “I don’t like that,” Trump […]
DONALD Trump hammered the World Health Organization again on Friday, hinting he will be holding talks on their US funding next week.
The president slammed the international organization for their handling of the COVID-19 crisis and letting China “get the better of the argument” during his White House press briefing.
“I don’t like that,” Trump declared. “I don’t think that’s appropriate, I don’t think its fair to the American people.
“I tell that to [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping], I tell that to [WHO Director General] Dr Tedros [Adhanom]. We are going to be talking about that next week in great detail.
“We want to make sure money is properly spent. Why is the US paying [WHO] $500 million a year, why is China paying, this year, $42 million dollars.
“The answer always turns out to be in China’s favor.”
Trump has repeatedly blasted the WHO this week for pushing back against his travel ban on China and failing to alert US officials how bad the outbreak could get.
New York Governor Cuomo today addressed the question of how the pandemic occurred in the US.
“How did they happen? Did we really need to be in this situation?” Cuomo told reporters at his daily press briefing.
However, the governor didn’t know which entity or person – whether it was the federal government, WHO, scientists, or international experts – was ultimately responsible for the fatal shortsightedness.
The WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January – but coronavirus wasn’t declared a pandemic until March 11.
There were reports the deadly bug had emerged in Wuhan, China, before Christmas, however.
The WHO has also been accused of being “China-centric” by the president while the CIA told White House officials Beijing was feeding WHO false numbers.
But ABC News reports the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) briefed the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House, about the contagion sweeping the communist nation as early as November.
The White House denied this bombshell preliminary report existed.
Trump announced that he realized the seriousness of the coronavirus situation “when he closed the US to China” in January, two months later.
The WHO has become his latest scapegoat after the media, China, and state governors all came under fire for the surging infection rates, deaths, and the flailing US economy.
The president had blasted the global institution again Thursday, saying they “minimized the threat” of COVID-19.
His comments prompted Director-General Tedros to warn that politicizing the coronavirus will mean more “body bags” as the US death toll tops 18,000.
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