Trump vs WHO
Jesse Watters on President Trump threatening to cut ties with W.H.O. funding amid their misleading COVID-19 response.
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President Donald J. Trump’s tireless enemies have adopted a new attack strategy. It echoes that old Abbott & Costello routine. Let’s call it WHO Was on First?
“It is a law of nature for liberals automatically to defend something that Trump opposes, even it’s the W.H.O. mishandling the current pandemic,” Townhall’s Julio Rosas observed Tuesday on Twitter. He curated several examples of such Left-wing anti-Trump rage, each via Twitter:
“Trump has found a new villain for the coronavirus pandemic: the World Health Organization,” according to Peter Baker of the New York Times.
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“Today’s new enemy is the World Health Organization,” wrote Joe Lockhart, a CNN contributor and President Clinton’s White House press secretary. “WE pay for a lot of it so they should always agree with us. Trump’s world view. They called it wrong. Months earlier…unbelievable projection…they raised the alarms, Trump chose to belittle them It’s all on tape.”
“BREAKING: Trump just attacked the World Health Organization and said he’s halting funding to them,” wrote the Democratic Coalition’s Scott Dworkin, a self-described “proud member of The Resistance.” He added: “During a pandemic. Where we are the hardest-hit country. Before we even peak. I can’t. No words.”
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Neither facts nor timelines justify the laurels that these and other hyperventilating liberals want to bestow upon the WHO. Likewise, the Left’s huffing and puffing do not reflect President Trump’s earlier respect for WHO’s judgment on COVID-19.
Trump did not distance himself from WHO until it emerged as whitewash artists for Red China’s cover-up of COVID-19’s toll on Wuhan.
As for WHO’s behavior, it got things very wrong, exactly when Trumpophobes say — in high-resolution hindsight — that he should have ordered ventilators and envisioned today’s kinder, gentler version of house arrest.
The WHO saw no reason for worry, as late as Jan. 23. That’s the date of the WHO’s statement from its International Health Regulations Emergency Committee, which met in Geneva a day earlier, on whether coronavirus was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC):
“On 22 Jan., the members of the Emergency Committee expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC,” the statement read.
The Left’s sudden portrayal of WHO as flawless and omniscient is as much a smokescreen as WHO’s efforts to camouflage the Chinese Communist Party’s responsibility for what ails us.
Based on this well-regarded judgment, it would have made sense for President Trump and federal officials to tread water until circumstances changed.
Regardless, Team Trump did not await the WHO’s green light before taking action.
Four days later, on Jan. 27, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spearheaded the first daily meeting of the President’s Coronavirus Task Force.
On Jan, 29, President Trump himself chaired his task force and then unveiled its members, including Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Robert Redfield and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. A world-renowned immunologist, Fauci has advised Democrat and Republican presidents from that post since 1984.
The next day, the WHO changed its tune. After the Emergency Committee reconvened, WHO concluded in a Jan. 30 communique: “The Committee agreed that the outbreak now meets the criteria for a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.”
The global pandemic was on.
WHO also took this occasion to throw lotus flowers in Beijing’s path.
“The measures China has taken are good not only for that country but also for the rest of the world,” WHO’s statement declared that day. “The Committee emphasized that the declaration of a PHEIC should be seen in the spirit of support and appreciation for China, its people, and the actions China has taken on the frontlines of this outbreak, with transparency, and, it is to be hoped, with success.”
The world soon learned that WHO’s applause for China’s “transparency” was either terminally naïve or a deliberate, Tiananmen Square-sized lie.
On Jan. 31, just one day after WHO announced this global plague, Azar declared “a public health emergency in the United States.”
That very day, President Trump banned the entry of aliens who had traveled to China within 14 days.
Rather than ignore or attack WHO, President Trump’s proclamation cited the body’s decision to justify the new travel restrictions: “On Jan. 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the 2019-nCoV outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden could have applauded Trump’s life-saving resolve. Instead, he accused the president of “hysterical xenophobia.” But then, 63 days later, Biden ignored the CDC's social-distancing recommendations and gave Trump’s ban a bear hug.
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“Joe Biden supports travel bans that are guided by medical experts, advocated by public health officials, and backed by a full strategy,” said Kate Bedingfeld, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, in a report by CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Science supported this ban, therefore he did, too.”
Given Biden’s four-part test for embracing travel bans, the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee now concedes that President Trump’s Chinese-travel limits were inspired by medical authorities, endorsed by public-health experts, incorporated into a comprehensive federal strategy, and backed by science. Democrats, take careful note and stop accusing President Trump of the opposite. If so, you will contradict your expected standard-bearer for the White House.
For his part, Dr. Fauci later praised the president’s “original decision" restricting admissions into America. He told journalists on Feb. 29: “If we had not done that, we would have had many, many more cases right here that we would have to be dealing with.”
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The Left’s sudden portrayal of WHO as flawless and omniscient is as much a smokescreen as WHO’s efforts to camouflage the Chinese Communist Party’s responsibility for what ails us.
Likewise, President Trump’s attackers, no surprise, employ similar deceit to ignore his immediate reaction to WHO’s pandemic declaration and caricature his robust COVID-19 response as leisurely. In other words, just another busy day at Hate Trump, Inc.