Kayleigh McEnany: WHO Must Prove It Has No China Bias

It will remain up to the World Health Organization to prove that it is not biased in favor of China and that it is using U.S. taxpayer dollars well, but there are "many pieces of evidence" that suggest that the organization put lives at risk by "slow-walking" information about the novel coronavirus, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday. 

"Taxpayer dollars will not go to an organization that slow-walks information and puts American lives at risk," McEnany said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "One of the most disturbing things that I think was in the letter the president wrote about the WHO was that on January 21, you had the Chinese President Xi Jinping pressuring the WHO to not call this a health emergency, and the very next day, you had the WHO saying this was not a public health emergency of international concern."

President Donald Trump Monday threatened to permanently halt funding for the World Health Organization if it did not commit to improvements within 30 days. Last month, the president stopped U.S. contributions to the WHO, accusing it of promoting Chinese "disinformation" about the novel coronavirus outbreak. WHO officials denied the accusation and China said it was transparent and open.

However, McEnany said, the WHO was "all for China's onerous restrictions to travel into their country but when the president said, 'I'm stopping travel at our border, from Wuhan,' we were told by the WHO that it was a bad decision, so interesting facts like that really highlight the problems."

According to reports, in 2018-2019, the United States gave the WHO almost $900 million, and China gave $90 million, and McEnany said it's the "million-dollar question" why China would get preferred treatment. 

"We finally have a president who says that's enough of funding those global organizations where we get very little in return," she said. 

• Taiwan, Excluded by WHO, Says It's Developing a Coronavirus Vaccine
• WHO Bows to Calls from Countries for Independent Virus Probe