Coronavirus: Donald Trump continues tirade against WHO, threatens ‘investigation’
- At his daily briefing, the president focuses on how Washington gave the agency US$452 million in funding last year compared with China’s US$42 million
- He also accused the agency of stating on January 14 that the coronavirus was not transmissible from human to human
US President Donald Trump redoubled his attack on the World Health Organisation on Wednesday, suggesting that the United States wasn’t getting its money’s worth and threatening to investigate the UN agency.
Trump did not provide details about any proposed investigation, instead focusing on how Washington provided US$452 million in funding last year compared with China’s US$42 million.
“We're going to study an investigation and we're going to make a determination,” Trump said at a daily White House press briefing. “In many ways they were wrong. They also minimised the threat.”
Trump administration officials have repeated several of these talking points in recent days, pointing the finger at the WHO amid mounting evidence that top officials in Washington were aware of the threat weeks before crisis managers kicked into gear.
As late as February 28, Trump referred to the attention being given to the pandemic as a “hoax” propagated by political enemies and the media.
Trump, who has a history of deflecting blame, also faces some modest slippage in recent opinion polls, something he watches closely. A CNN poll released on Wednesday reported that 52 per cent of those surveyed disapproved of Trump’s actions during the crisis, up from 48 per cent since early March. And an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday showed a similar trend.