Facing growing criticism over his handling of this crisis, President Trump is now seeking to pin the blame for the spread of the coronavirus on the World Health Organization (WHO).
Officials at the UN agency criticised his decision to impose a ban on travellers entering the US from China at the end of January – a move the president has since touted as crucial to controlling the spread of the virus. With conservative commentators and some Senate Republicans taking to the airwaves to denounce the Geneva-based body, Trump has clearly decided it would be politically expedient to join them.
He sees the WHO as being biased towards China, and believes it was too unquestioning of the early information about Covid-19 that came from the Chinese.
Although the WHO is not above criticism – particularly for its early assertion that human transmission had not been proven, and its reticence later on to declare a pandemic – even some of the president’s leading supporters are questioning the timing of his threat to withhold funding for the world’s leading health organisation – coming, as it does, at the height of a global pandemic.
(BBC)