President Trump said Tuesday that the World Health Organization “really blew it” with its response to the coronavirus outbreak, and he threatened to cut U.S. funding as calls escalated for an overhaul of the U.N. agency.
“They could have called it much earlier,” Mr. Trump said at a coronavirus task force briefing Tuesday evening. “When they call every shot wrong, that’s no good.”
Mr. Trump said the U.S. pays a disproportionate amount to the public health arm of the United Nations, so he wants to see whether the commitment is worth the money.
The president is no fan of spending U.S. dollars around the world instead of at home, but withholding funding from WHO amid a pandemic is likely to spark criticism.
“I’m not saying I’m going to do it,” Mr. Trump said.
The president’s broadside came as Republicans zeroed in on the agency and its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. They accused him of acting as a tool of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine instead of the leader of a neutral global authority whose charge is to “promote health, keep the world safe, serve the vulnerable.”
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Mr. Tedros has been criticized time and again for the agency’s response to COVID-19, starting with waiting until March 11 to declare a pandemic and congratulating China for its “extraordinary measures” and “commitment to transparency” despite evidence that Chinese authorities engaged in a cover-up of the novel coronavirus.
A Jan. 14 tweet on the WHO account has not aged well: “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus.”
So far, however, most of the U.S. criticism has come from the right. Sen. Martha McSally, Arizona Republican, has called for the resignation of Mr. Tedros, an Ethiopian malaria researcher and former health minister who has led the agency since 2017.
Ms. McSally accused WHO on Tuesday of “parroting [China’s] propaganda.” She told Fox Business that the U.S. could have responded earlier, “but China put us in this position because of their lies and the cover-ups and the complicit World Health Organization.”
Sen. Rick Scott, Florida Republican, called last week for an investigation when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill to review whether taxpayers should spend $123 million annually “to fund an organization that willfully parroted propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Last week, the Chinese Communist Party bestowed the title of “martyr” on Dr. Li Wenliang, the Wuhan Central Hospital physician who was muzzled after sounding the alarm in late December about the rapidly spreading virus. He died Feb. 7 of COVID-19 after he was forced to sign a letter admitting to “making false comments.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Tedros advised against the travel restrictions on China implemented Jan. 31 by the Trump administration, and waiting to declare an international public health emergency until Jan. 30, a week after the agency held an emergency meeting.
Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that “WHO is complicit in the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Not only did they praise the Chinese Communist Party’s troubling response, they amplified their disinformation about human to human transmission of coronavirus, continued to ignore Taiwan, and went so far as to criticize the President for his life-saving measure to ban travel from China early on,” Mr. McCaul said in an email.
Taiwan has accused WHO of ignoring its early research and warnings. On Dec. 31, Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control informed WHO of indications that the virus could be transmitted from person to person, but like China, the United Nations and WHO do not recognize Taiwan.
“The corrupt WHO needs to stop pushing the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda and return to their mission of protecting global health,” Mr. McCaul said.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said Monday that WHO “has consistently bent to the will of the Chinese Communist Party” throughout the public health crisis.
“It has lost the credibility necessary to be effective, and a reevaluation of its leadership is rightfully called for,” Mr. Cruz said.
Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, weighed in Friday by declaring that “WHO owes an explanation to the world of why they took China’s word for it. So much suffering has been caused by the mishandling of information and lack of accountability by the Chinese.”
The Washington Times has reached out to WHO for comment. At a Feb. 12 press conference, Mr. Tedros defended his support for China’s coronavirus response and said “China doesn’t need to ask to be praised.”
“I know there is a lot of pressure on WHO when we appreciate what China is doing, but because of pressure we should not fail to tell the truth. We should tell the truth, and that’s the truth,” he said, according to a transcript.
The director-general held a press conference Monday featuring Lady Gaga to announce an April 18 broadcast and streaming special, “One World: Together at Home,” to benefit WHO’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.
“The World Health Organization is committed to defeating the coronavirus pandemic with science and public health measures, and supporting the health workers who are on the frontlines of the response,” he said in a statement. “We may have to be apart physically for a while, but we can still come together virtually to enjoy great music.
He called the concert “a powerful show of solidarity against a common threat.”
A Change.org petition calling for Mr. Tedro’s resignation had gathered as of Tuesday nearly 750,000 signatures worldwide.
The White House proposed in February cutting U.S. funding to WHO in half, from $123 million to $58 million. The U.S. has been the largest funder of the agency’s roughly $5 billion budget, representing 22% of assessed member-state contributions, while China accounts for 12%, according to The Wall Street Journal.
• Tom Howell Jr. contributed to this report.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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