If there is one thing Donald Trump likes more than patting himself on the back, it’s a convenient scapegoat to shift the public narrative. In what has become a daily ritual, Trump held a coronavirus news conference in the White House Rose Garden yesterday to announce a suspension of U.S. funding to the World Health Organisation. The reason for Trump’s decision: the WHO’s supposed lack of independence from China, which the president cited as a key factor in the global spread of Covid-19.
‘The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable,’ Trump said. In the president’s mind and in the minds of many Republicans in Washington, the agency failed while tens of thousands of people, young and old alike, lay gasping for breath in hospital beds. The funding cut is going to hit the WHO hard; in the last two-year budget cycle, the U.S. pledged nearly £717m ($900m) to the agency, roughly a fifth of its total budget.
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