US President Donald Trump said last Wednesday his administration is working on introducing “very distinct” recommendations to hold China and the World Health Organization accountable for the spread of COVID-19, which is the illness caused by the coronavirus.
“We’re not happy about it, and we are by far the largest contributor to WHO,” Mr. Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with the governor of Louisiana. “They misled us. They’re literally a pipe organ for China.”
Mr. Trump has given U.S. intelligence agencies the task to investigate whether the WHO and the Chinese government kept vital information regarding the coronavirus pandemic from the world earlier in 2020.
“It’s coming in, I’m getting pieces already,” the president said of the probe. “There’s nothing positive about what happened in China.”
Glad that @RealDonaldTrump is taking action to hold Communist China and the @WHO accountable.
We need more information and transparency. What did they know and when did they know it? https://t.co/GThbcwKtR5
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) April 29, 2020
Mr. Trump said he will be introducing a recommendation regarding the WHO, “with China to follow.”
The president noted that the disease “could have been stopped at the source” in the Chinese city of Wuhan, late in 2019.
The virus has so far infected more than 1 million people in the United States and has taken the lives of 61,669.
“They should have been able to stop it,” Mr. Trump said of the WHO and China. “And then why did China allow planes to fly out, but not into China? Planes were coming out of Wuhan, and going all over the world. They were going to Italy, very big time to Italy. But they’re not going into China. What was that all about? We’re not happy with it.”
The president said that he crafted a trade deal at the White House back in January with Chinese officials as the pandemic was getting worse in China.
However, he said their officials did not warn him.
“You would have thought that somebody could have said, ‘Hey.’ They could have stopped it at the source,” he said. “They didn’t have to let airplanes fly out, and loads of people come out.”
On January 31 President Trump stopped travel from China, except for U.S. citizens and green cardholders.
The Trump administration has already stopped United States financial aid to the WHO, noting that he wanted a review of its actions since the beginning of the crisis. The United States gives a total of $400 million each year to the World Health Organization.
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