Print 
PDF
President Trump made it official Tuesday that he is halting funding to the World Health Organization.
The reason? In January, WHO said COVID 19 could not be spread by human to human contact, praising China for their response to the virus.
We now know WHO was covering for China.
President Trump says WHO needs to be held accountable---and he's doing just that.
Now there's a global attack on Trump.
Be informed.
President Trump's decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization---which is about $500 million per year, far more than any other country---has touched off an international war of words as Democrats in DC and international bodies like the European Union condemned the move.
But first: Some of our listeners and readers are wanting more information about something mentioned yesterday.
Yesterday I mentioned on the radio that Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, received widespread media coverage after it was discovered that he had traveled to both Ukraine and China with his father Joe Biden, who was then Vice President Joe Biden, representing the United States and our interest in possible corruption. Following the trip and meetings with officials, son Hunter ended up on the board of Burisma, the Ukraine gas company, and on the board of BHR, a private Chinese equity firm.
He received between $50 and $80 thousand per month from the gas company, and served as an unpaid member of the Chinese equity firm's board. However, he received his 10% equity stake in the $2.1 billion company, BHR Partners, in October 2017.
Although his lawyers promised the American people last October that Hunter would resign off the board by October 31, the Daily Caller is reporting that as of Tuesday (day before yesterday), he is still on the board.
A global battle has erupted over President Trump's decision to stop funding WHO.
Earlier this week President Trump said,
"Our countries are now experiencing---look all over the world---tremendous death and economic devastation because those tasked with protecting us by being truthful and transparent failed to do so."
Fox is reporting:
"The president announced Tuesday that the United States would immediately halt funding for the health organization saying it had put 'political correctness over life saving measures', noting that the US would undertake a 60 to 90 day investigation into why 'China-centric' WHO had caused 'so much death' by 'severely mismanaging and covering up' the coronavirus spread."
Republicans on Capitol Hill, many of whom have been sharply critical of the World Health Organization and have been calling for such an action, were pleased.
However, the globalist-left in and outside our government erupted.
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, and House Subcommittee on National Security Chairman Steve Lynch, D-MASS, penned a letter to the President slamming his decision to withhold funding to the organization amid the global pandemic.
They said in part,
"While we may agree that the WHO has shortcomings that must be corrected, your attack on the global health organization can easily be seen as a deliberate but transparent effort effort to deflect responsibility for your own failures unto others."
Others of their comrades joined the attack:
- Sen Ben Cardin (D-Md), "Irresponsible, irrational..."
- American Medical Association President Patrice Harris, "step in the wrong direction...will make things worse,"
- European Union--- "deeply regret...wrong decision," "needed now more than ever."
- UN Sec. General, "the timing of this decision was wrong..."
Good for him. The United States regularly gives between $400 million and $500 million to the World Health Organization. The US was ready to give it $893 million for the next two-year period. Not now.
China contributes only about $40 million each.
Bill Gates slammed President Trump saying his decision "is as dangerous as it sounds." He said, "Their work is slowing the spread and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them."
Gates, who is now worth $104 billion, according to Forbes, would know that WHO is not indispensable unless you see it in the framework of a global worldview.
But a prevailing globalist worldview usually shades the truth---even for the super-rich.
In February, Bill and Melinda Gates, through their foundation, committed up to $100 million to several groups, including WHO.
There is also praise for Trump's decision.
Last week when the issue first surfaced, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, said the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party were "co-conspirators" in allegedly hiding information about the novel coronavirus in its early stages, and called it "the worst cover-up in human history."
He's right
The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed that lays out the real problem. The piece is titled, "Lost in Beijing: The story of WHO."
In it, Lanhee Chen, a fellow at Hoover Institute and director of domestic policy studies at Stanford University, says the "World Health Organization isn't just 'China-centric' as President Trump called it Tuesday. It is also broken and compromised."
Then he writes this:
While Washington pays, Beijing works behind the scenes to influence WHO leaders. The current director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was backed strongly by the Chinese government during his campaign for the job. Mr. Tedros was a controversial pick, dogged by allegations of having covered up cholera outbreaks in his native Ethiopia, where he served as health minister (2005-12) and foreign minister (2012-16). During those years, China invested in Ethiopia and lent it billions of dollars. Shortly after winning his WHO election, Mr. Tedros traveled to Beijing and lauded the country’s health-care system: “We can all learn something from China.”
Under Mr. Tedros’s leadership, the WHO has accepted China’s falsehoods about the coronavirus and helped launder them into respectable-looking public-health assessments.
On Jan. 14, before an official WHO delegation had even visited China, the group parroted Beijing’s claim that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Two weeks later, after China had reported more than 4,500 cases of the virus and over 70 people in other countries were sick with it, Mr. Tedros visited China and heaped praise on its leaders for their “transparency.”
Recall that China waited six weeks after patients first saw symptoms in Wuhan to institute a lockdown there. During this time Chinese authorities censored and punished physicians who tried to sound the alarm, repeatedly denied that the virus could be transmitted between humans, and held a public banquet in Wuhan for tens of thousands of families. In the meantime, more than five million people left or fled Wuhan, according to the city’s mayor. This included the patient with the first confirmed case of the virus in America.
The WHO finally declared a public-health emergency on Jan. 30, after nearly 10,000 cases of the virus had been confirmed. China’s reported figures rose in early February to more than 17,000 infections and 361 deaths, yet Mr. Tedros rebuked Mr. Trump for restricting travel from China and urged other countries not to follow suit. He called the virus’s spread outside China “minimal and slow.” It took until March 11 for the WHO to declare a pandemic. By that point the official world-wide case count was 118,000 people in 114 countries.
The U.S. should work aggressively to change the culture and leadership of the WHO. The Trump administration took a good first step in January by creating a special envoy at the State Department focused on countering China’s attempts to control international organizations. The WHO’s next director-general must not be a rubber stamp for Beijing.
If efforts to transform the WHO are ineffective, the U.S. may have no choice but to walk away and start over. That could mean creating an alternative organization open to any country willing to abide by higher standards of transparency, good governance and the sharing of best practices. The world needs an organization that can be trusted to address public-health problems that transcend borders—if not the WHO, then something else.
Pray for President Trump. And pray for our country.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Prayerful.