President Donald Trump is accusing the World Health Organization (WHO) of dropping the ball with the coronavirus outbreak as he threatens to pull the agency’s funding.
During a phone interview, Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump about his position on the global health agency and China.
Noting the initial reports about the coronavirus, the president accused WHO of having a “China-centric” stance that has led to flawed statistics and projections.
“[The] World Health [Organization] – very China-centric, as I say – basically everything was very positive for China,” Trump said on Tuesday night. “Don’t close your borders,’ they strongly recommended … that we not close our borders. That would’ve been a disaster, that would’ve been a total disaster.”
Trump also scorched the agency as he accused it of calling “every shot wrong.”
“And literally, they called every shot wrong,” the president added. “They didn’t want to say where [coronavirus] came from. For many years, we’ve been funding the World Health Organization.”
See Trump’s full interview with Hannity below:
Trump also noted the possibility of the United States withholding funding from the global health agency.
“We’re going to look at it now because I think every step that they made, everything that they said was wrong and always in favor of China,” he said. “‘Keep it open, don’t close the borders.’ I didn’t listen to them, and I did what I wanted to do, and it was a good move.”
Trump’s claims prompted a response from Dr. Hans Kluge — the regional director for WHO in Europe. During a virtual briefing, Kluge pushed back on behalf of the agency.
Kluge also noted how detrimental it would be to put funding on hold in the midst of a pandemic.
“We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding,” Kluge said.
WHO Director-General’s senior advisor Dr. Bruce Aylward also defended the agency’s relationship with China and Beijing, arguing that it was critical to gather early details about the outbreak.
“It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,” Aylward said.
Aylward added, “This is what we did with every other hard-hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically.”
