Trump claimed last week that the WHO 'minimized the threat very strongly,' though he has also minimized the threat of the coronavirus throughout the crisis
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Though the president’s daily coronavirus press briefings continue to decrease in news value, on Tuesday, Trump announced during his venting hour that the United States would cut funding to the World Health Organization. Emphasizing the country’s “duty to insist on full accountability,” Trump announced he would cease American funding to the WHO while a review is conducted to determine its role in “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.
The president has been rhetorically setting up the move since at least last week. “The WHO really blew it,” he tweeted on April 7. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look.” According to Axios, the Trump administration is considering two potential plans to defund the program: By asking Congress to rescind federal budget funds for the WHO — as the administration did when it cut $285 million in U.N.
Throughout the pandemic, Trump has accused the WHO of being overly deferential to China, the source of the first coronavirus outbreak. Last week, he pointed to a tweet from the organization on January 14 which repeated Beijing’s claim that there was still “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.
“In many ways, they were wrong,” Trump said on April 9. “They also minimized the threat very strongly.” However, the move to defund the WHO has also been interpreted as a classic Trump deflection, as he, too, has minimized the threat of the coronavirus in each month of the pandemic so far.
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