President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced plans to put a hold on U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, accusing the United Nations specialized agency of being “very China centric” and criticizing its early guidance aimed at countering the international spread of the coronavirus.
“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,“ Trump said at the outset of a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House.
Minutes later, though, the president walked back the declaration, telling reporters that he was “looking into it” and conceding that a global pandemic was “maybe not” the best time to freeze funding for the international organization.
“I mean, I‘m not saying I‘m going to do it, but we are going to look at it,” Trump said, denying his comments from minutes earlier when pressed by reporters. “I said we’re going to look at it. We’re going to investigate it, we’re going to look at it. But we will look at ending funding.”
The president appeared to be following through on a threat he‘d made earlier in the day to slash federal funding for the organization.
“The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look,” Trump wrote on Twitter earlier in the day.