Under-fire US President Donald Trump wants a new scapegoat for failing to heed expert warnings about the dire consequences of failing to prepare for a viral pandemic according to a warning memo in January.
In his now increasingly frantic daily briefings on the pandemic in the US, he further attempted to shift the blame for thousands of American deaths from covid-19, by blasting the World Health Organization.
Trump’s inaction is under intense scrutiny after a New York Times report said Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro warned in January that the virus could put millions of lives at risk and cost trillions of dollars.
The alarmingly unhinged president has never taken or accepted any responsibility and sought to blame China, the Obama administration and the media.
Trump blamed the WHO, even though it raised the alarm in January, after which he made statements downplaying it and comparing it to the common flu.
“They’ve been wrong about a lot of things,” Trump said at the daily White House coronavirus task force briefing. “And they had a lot of information early and they didn’t want to – they seemed to be very China centric”.
“They called it wrong, they called it wrong. 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.
“We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see. It’s a great thing if it works but when they call every shot wrong, it’s not good.”
After that bombshell, Trump was asked as if the middle of a global pandemic was the time to suspend money for World Health, he backtracked, ‘No, maybe not,” he replied, I’m not saying I’m going to do it but we’re going to look at.”
A reporter interjected and corrected a pouting president who added ”I said we’re going to look at it. We’re going to investigate it, we’re going to look at it. But we will look at ending funding, yeah, because you know what, they called it wrong, and if you look back over the years even, everything seems to be very biased toward China. That’s not right.”
Covid-19 was officially declared a public health emergency on 30 January, nearly a month before Trump tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA”, and proclaimed, “One day – it’s like a miracle – it will disappear.”
He eventually declared a national emergency on 13 March. The Trump administration requested a reduction of the American contribution to the WHO from an estimated $122.6m to $57.9m earlier this year.
It was also reported this week that nearly 40,000 people have flown from China to the US since the partial ban came into effect on 2 February.
Trump added, when it was not clear how bad the situation would become. “I don’t want to create havoc and shock and everything else. I’m not going to go out and start screaming, ‘This could happen, this could happen.’ I’m a cheerleader for this country.”
He is responsible for 3 times the deaths of Americans on American soil as Osama Bin Laden. This is one of the gravest moments in American history, no pun intended. Yet, this is how he behaves, this trivial infantile tantrum while a desperate frightened dying America looks on. pic.twitter.com/PvLMkkHa8C
— Larry Charles (@larrycharlesism) April 7, 2020
