The World Health Organization (WHO) is responsible for providing guidance regarding international public health, so people around the world are looking to the WHO during this global pandemic.
So President Donald Trump's stated intent to cut funding to WHO during a global health crisis was unexpected, to say the least.
On Tuesday, Trump announced his plans to freeze US funding to the "China centric" WHO.
Trump said:
"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."
Almost immediately afterward, when challenged on the wisdom of freezing that funding during a pandemic, the president backtracked and claimed he didn't say what we all heard him say.
Behold:
"I mean, I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but we are going to look at it.
"You did say you were going to do it."
"No I didn't, I said we're going to look at it. We're going to investigate it. We're going to look at it."
You can see his remarks here:
Trump echoed something he had posted earlier on Twitter about the WHO. He criticized the international agency for focusing on China and for their supposed advice on open borders which he claimed to have ignored.
"The WHO really blew it. 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's recollection of the WHO advice was less than accurate.
People were not in agreement with the President's targeting of the organization.
The WHO declared a global pandemic on January 30. Since then, people around the world have relied on them for accurate, unbiased, science-backed information.
The President's own pandemic briefings have drawn mainly fact checking and criticism.
For more stories of Trump's ineptitude from people who were there, check out A Very Stable Genius, available here.
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