Trump Hopes You Forget How He Praised China And The WHO Before Blaming Them
For months, the president applauded China’s coronavirus response before he and his reelection team flipped to blaming that country.
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s stepped-up efforts to blame China and the World Health Organization for the coronavirus pandemic’s toll may require collective amnesia of his recent lavish praise of both to work.
“The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts,” Trump wrote in a new letter to the WHO threatening to end U.S. funding permanently. “The World Health Organization has been curiously insistent on praising China for its alleged ‘transparency.’”
What the five-page letter, dated Monday, fails to note is his own repeated praise of both China and its dictator, Xi Jinping ? including for that same “alleged transparency.”
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,” Trump wrote in a Jan. 24 Twitter post. “The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
It was neither the first nor the last such tribute. On Jan. 22, the first day Trump spoke publicly about the coronavirus, he told Fox News there was nothing to worry about. “It’s all taken care of. And China is working very hard on the problem. We spoke about it and China is working very hard on it.”