U.S. President Donald Trump is now trying to place the blame for the coronavirus pandemic on the World Health Organization (WHO).
Trump directed his ire at the WHO during Tuesday's coronavirus task force briefing, during which he threatened to place "a very powerful hold" on the funds that the U.S. contributes to the international organization, The Guardian reports.
Trump, arguably searching for a scapegoat for his own administration's myriad failures, accused the WHO of bungling the global coronavirus response and withholding crucial information from the world, according to The Guardian. However, the WHO actually sounded the alarm and declared the coronavirus outbreak a global crisis more than a month before Trump declared a state of national emergency.
"They called it wrong, they called it wrong," Trump said of the WHO. "They missed the call. They could have called it months earlier. They would have known and they should have known and they probably did know. So we'll be looking into that very carefully and we’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO."
That puts the WHO among the ranks of the Obama administration, his own government agencies, Democrats, the media, and China, all of which Trump has previously blamed for the ongoing global crisis.
A few minutes after he first threatened to withhold his funding, a reporter challenged Trump's decision to defund the WHO during a global pandemic. In response, The Guardian reports that Trump denied that he had done so and immediately backtracked his comments.
"I'm not saying I'm going to do it but we're going to look at [it]," Trump then said about pulling financial support.
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READ MORE: Trump threatens to hold WHO funding, then backtracks, amid search for scapegoat [The Guardian]
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