President Donald Trump threatened to permanently end funding to the World Health Organization and pull out of the international body altogether in a letter blasting its coronavirus response and accusing its head of “political gamesmanship.”
The letter, which Trump revealed in a tweet Monday evening, listed a number of criticisms of the WHO’s initial response to the novel coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak in China.
He claimed the WHO “ignored credible reports of the virus” and accused the organization of acting too slowly and bowing to pressure from the Chinese government. Trump said that had Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus followed the example of the WHO during the SARS outbreak in 2003, during which it strongly criticized Chinese attempts to cover up the spread of the virus, “many lives could have been saved.” Continue reading.