Greg Sargent takes a look at Trump’s new crusade to scapegoat the WHO for his own mistakes and finds — surprise! — that it doesn’t hold up:
The WHO’s initial mistakes were real, and many critics beyond Trump have pointed to them. The organization was too trusting of China’s early obfuscations about coronavirus, and failed to aggressively push China to be more transparent. The WHO also arguably was too slow to declare a global public health emergency.
But cutting off funding as a punishment is counterproductive and deeply absurd. Indeed, even if you accept that the WHO committed serious errors, the timeline is still far more damning to Trump, by the terms that he himself has set through his criticism of the organization.
The timeline is far more damning to Trump
By Jan. 23, the WHO was already warning that coronavirus could “appear in any country,” and urged all countries to be “prepared for containment” and get ready to exercise “isolation” and “prevention” measures against its spread.
At around the same time, on Jan. 22, Trump was asked point-blank whether he worried about coronavirus’s spread, and he answered: “No, not at all,” insisting it was just “one person coming from China” and that “we have it totally under control.”
And on Jan. 24, Trump hailed China’s “effort” against coronavirus and its “transparency” about it, predicting that “it will all work out well.”
So Trump showed less concern about its spread in countries outside China — including in our own — than the WHO did.
On Jan. 30, the WHO declared coronavirus a global public health emergency. While WHO was still too credulous toward China’s response, WHO also warned that all countries must review “preparedness plans” and take seriously what was coming.
By contrast, on Jan. 30, Trump was directly warned by his Health and Human Services secretary of the threat coronavirus posed. Trump dismissed this as “alarmist.”
And on Feb. 2, Trump boasted to Sean Hannity: “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China.” He hailed our “tremendous relationship” with that country. Trump continued praising China’s handling of coronavirus all through the entire month of February.
So at the very least, Trump showed precisely the same credulity about China that Trump is now faulting the WHO for showing, but without appreciating the urgency of the international threat coronavirus posed to the degree that the WHO did.
As MSNBC’s Ari Melber aptly put it, these attacks on the WHO are “only calling attention to the fact that the WHO was ahead of President Trump.”
About those travel restrictions
Trump announced restrictions on travel from China on Jan. 31, and he constantly bashes the WHO for disagreeing with this move.
But, while it’s true that the WHO did recommend against restrictions on travel, Trump’s decision simply doesn’t demonstrate anything remotely like what he claims it does.
First, at least 40,000 people traveled to the U.S. from China after this announcement, raising reasonable questions about how much it actually accomplished. More importantly, Trump disastrously squandered the time bought by this decision.
Indeed, Trump utterly failed to use that time to mitigate the spread that was already underway here. As the New York Times damningly documented, plans for a federal system to track the virus were “delayed for weeks,” which, along with the failure to ramp up testing, left officials with “almost no insight” into its spread.
And in late February, Trump privately raged against his own officials’ conclusion that Trump had to communicate the need for strict social distancing measures far more urgently, leading to “crucial additional weeks” in which the “virus spread largely unimpeded.”
Thus, Trump’s constant citation of his travel restrictions actually points to a major failure: The decision persuaded him he had shut out coronavirus successfully, helping spawn the lax posture that produced all that lost time, the horrifying consequences of which are unfolding right now.
Indeed, that decision to this day still continues to delude him into believing he managed this disaster effectively. That’s why he keeps citing it as representative of his glorious, decisive leadership — and contrasting it favorably with the WHO’s response.
By the way, as late as March 8th he was telling his donors at Mar-a-lago that the social distancing recommendations were simply to “destroy the country.” Remember this?
“They’re trying to scare everybody, from meetings, cancel the meetings, close the schools — youknow, destroy the country. And that’s ok, as long as we can win the election.
They didn’t release the guidelines until over a week later. He knew. All he cared about was his re-election.
He can blame the WHO all he wants but he can’t escape his own devastating irresponsbility.