The US President this week put the blame on the dire situation in his country – where COVID-19 cases have now topped 424,000 with over 12,800 deaths – on the World Health Organization during the daily coronavirus taskforce briefing at the White House, saying the United Nations’ public health body had “called it wrong”.
“They’ve been wrong about a lot of things,” he said. “And they had a lot of information early and they didn’t want to – they seemed to be very China centric.”
Trump promised to put “a very powerful hold” on his government’s funding of the WHO in response but then quickly backtracked, saying a freeze was only under consideration. “I’m not saying I’m going to do it but we’re going to look at,” he added.
The news comes as the US President’s delayed action on the virus has come under scrutiny with reports that Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, had warned in a memo in late January that COVID-19 could put millions of Americans at risk and cost trillions of dollars.
The WHO had declared COVID-19 a public health emergency on 30 January – but a month later Trump was still tweeting: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA”.
The President eventually declared a national emergency on 13 March.
Trump argued he had not known how bad the situation would become. “I don’t want to create havoc and shock and everything else. I’m not going to go out and start screaming: ‘This could happen, this could happen.’ I’m a cheerleader for this country,” he said.
With the US now having the highest number of cases in the world, they certainly need one.
