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Keller @ Large: Trump Orders Halt To U.S. Funding Of WHO

BOSTON (CBS) - "It would have been so easy to be truthful, and so much death has been caused by their mistakes," said President Trump yesterday as he ordered a halt to U.S. funding of the World Health Organization while his administration reviews claims the group was guilty of "severely mismanaging and covering up" the COVID-19 outbreak.

But to Nicholas Burns of Harvard's Kennedy School, the former US Ambassador to NATO, withdrawal of America's $553 million contribution – less than ten percent of the WHO's annual budget – is "like cutting off funding to the fire department in the middle of a fire," it doesn't make sense for the United States.

Mr. Trump claims the WHO has been too China-centric and unaccountable for early errors in judgment after the virus emerged in Wuhan. And Burns agrees the WHO's handling of the pandemic has been far from perfect and deserves future scrutiny.

But not right now.

"This is not the time to try to change horses in midstream," he told WBZ News. "To cut funding to the one organization that could help countries around the world seems very much misguided, and frankly, it seems political as the president is trying to deflect attention from his own shortcomings."

Those include a fateful US decision to reject an early WHO test for COVID-19, a call that set back our testing capacity. Burns notes it will be the WHO that oversees distribution of a vaccine for the virus when it becomes available.

And he says years of Trump attacks on global organizations such as NATO, the World Trade Organization and the WHO may come home to roost.

"What goes around comes around, you need to invest and show some respect for organizations if you expect them in return to help us when the chips are down."

As with past instances of presidential attacks, it remains to be seen if Mr. Trump will follow through. At various points in recent days he has said he will "look into" US contributions to the WHO, then said he will "put a hold" on the money, then denied having said so.

But at a moment of growing political vulnerability, the temptation is surely strong to both deflect blame for problems with the US response to the pandemic and tie the target of his enmity to the Chinese, a perennial Trump bogeyman.

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