U.S. President Donald Trump sharply criticized the World Health Organization on Tuesday, accusing it of being too focused on China and issuing bad advice during the new coronavirus outbreak and saying he would put a hold on U.S. funding for the agency.
“The W.H.O. really blew it,” Trump said in a Twitter post. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”
Trump repeated the accusations against the U.N. health organization at a White House news briefing later on Tuesday.
“They called it wrong. They really – they missed the call,” the president said. “And we’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see.”
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric rejected the criticism of the WHO, which is led by Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Dujarric added that the WHO had also recently done “tremendous work” in putting its staff on the frontlines to successfully fight Ebola, an infectious and often fatal disease, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The WHO did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on Trump’s remarks.
