Samuel Rodriguez: Trump Is Rightly Holding WHO to Account

President Donald Trump announced the U.S. will halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) while his administration investigates the organization’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a briefing at the White House on Tuesday, April 14, Trump said the investigation would be “very thorough” and would last 60 to 90 days. During that time, his administration will look into WHO’s and the Chinese government’s response to the virus outbreak.

“Today I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” Trump said. “As the organization’s leading sponsor, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability. One of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations.”

The U.S. is the largest contributor to WHO, according to NPR. Its funding amounts to 22% of total members’ assessed contributions. China’s is equal to 12%.

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez applauds Trump’s decision to halt funding to WHO and investigate. He released the following statement:

“I applaud the president’s decision to hold the World Health Organization to account for its apparent mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, even as it has brazenly parroted Chinese propaganda. It is gravely immoral for an international body like WHO to conduct itself as it has; its leadership owes the world answers, now. I also call upon governors in all 50 states and Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to support the president’s decision with one, collective voice.

“Democrats, in particular, should resist the strategy being deployed by Chinese propagandists—as attempted by the Chinese ambassador to the United States himself in a New York Times editorial—to make these efforts in accountability about race.

“Of course, every actual case of xenophobia and racism must be vigorously condemned, and no one should treat the Chinese people or Asian Americans unkindly for the vices of the CCP, but the power of these words should not be diminished by their misuse in an attempt to score political points against a political nemesis.

“It is not racist to call out the malfeasance of WHO, which has cost lives, in subservience to the Chinese Communist Party which has cost many more lives because of COVID-19, and [before it] by the internment of the Uighurs, the persecution of journalists and religious leaders, the forced disappearance of dissidents and, most recently, by enabling overt racism against immigrants of color in cities like Guangzhou.”