This week, President Donald Trump insisted that the U.S. would be stopping all of its financial contributions to the World Health Organization amidst a review of its Coronavirus response. The crisis is still raging, and the WHO is on the front lines — and Trump seems most concerned with scoring political points against the agency, as if it’s some kind of conspiring political opponent. This week, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) hammered the president for his cowardly inaction.
President Trump says U.S. is pulling funding to WHO because the group praised China's "transparency."
Below is President Trump's tweet from January 24 praising China's transparency. https://t.co/zVew3c212c
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 14, 2020
Schiff tweeted:
‘As usual, Trump is looking to deflect blame for his own failures. After he wasted weeks calling COVID-19 as harmless as the flu. International cooperation on public health has never been more critical. Freezing funding for the World Health Organization will only make it worse.’
As usual, Trump is looking to deflect blame for his own failures.
After he wasted weeks calling COVID-19 as harmless as the flu.
International cooperation on public health has never been more critical.
Freezing funding for the World Health Organization will only make it worse. https://t.co/EHenSBOc4X
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 14, 2020
Trump’s claimed that the organization was overly China-centric in their Coronavirus response — but Donald Trump himself was praising China’s response to the crisis early this year, weeks before he called lasting Coronavirus concern a hoax. Throughout that whole period, the U.S. could have launched some kind of comprehensive virus response beyond the single, solitary act of restricting travel from China — but they did not. “Trump decided to believe President Xi instead” of intelligence reports from within his own administration “because he gets rolled by dictators every single time,” as one commentator put it.
This is key. There isn’t a political debate over whether China lied. China lied. U.S. intelligence knew that.
Trump decided to believe President Xi instead – because he gets rolled by dictators every single time. https://t.co/HpURRODnZo
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) April 15, 2020
Now, with the consequences of his own personal inaction piling up, Trump seems like he’s desperately trying to deflect blame, although the hollowness of the whole ordeal seems abundantly clear.
Check out Twitter’s response to Schiff below…
