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The coronavirus pandemic broke out in December last year, and is still wreaking havoc on many countries until today especially in the United States. During the latest White House briefing, President Donald Trump pinned the blame on the World Health Organization for supposedly getting the pandemic wrong.
CNBC reports that Trump blamed the WHO for getting the pandemic wrong and for supposedly making bad calls on preventative measures. “They did give us some pretty bad play calling … with regard to us, they’re taking a lot of heat because they didn’t want the borders closed, they called it wrong. They really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong,” said Trump during the briefing.
Trump continued to note the travel restrictions he placed on January 31st, restricting entry of foreigners who have traveled to China within the past two weeks, with the exception of those who are immediate relatives of US citizens. The President also plans to withhold funds to the organization despite Congress already authorized $122 million to the organization for its fiscal year. Subsequently, Trump proposed a big cut on funds allocated to WHO with only $58 million in 2021, but it is highly unlikely that Congress would approve of the cut.
WHO had already raised the concern of the coronavirus as early as mid-January following its outbreak in Wuhan, China. The United Nation’s health organization also classified it as a global health emergency by the end of January, with 8,200 cases across the 18 countries that were affected by the virus. Since then, the pandemic affected over a million people and tens of thousands died. WHO then declared the coronavirus a pandemic by March when the cases went up to 121,000 globally. There are over 380,000 cases of coronavirus in the United States.
Meanwhile, due to the outbursts of the latest White House briefing that was televised, Deadline reports that the networks are now somewhat under pressure to limit their live coverage.
Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski expressed her frustration with the most recent briefings on social media. “Trump is flat out lying to the American people and right now our network and all networks should be cutting in to FactCheck him. If we’re going to carry these ridiculous briefings, we need to give it context and we need to fact check a President who has trouble with the truth,” tweeted Brzezinski.
