Washington—Representative Eliot L. Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, this evening made the following statement on President Trump’s announcement to withhold funding from the World Health Organization (WHO):

“With each passing day of this worsening crisis, the President is showing us his political playbook: blame the WHO, blame China, blame his political opponents, blame his predecessors—do whatever it takes to deflect from the fact that his administration mismanaged this crisis and it’s now costing thousands of American lives. 

“No one believes China’s propaganda about the origins of the virus. No one doubts that the WHO—with a vital global mandate, total dependence on Member states, and a budget about the size of a single American hospital—has performed imperfectly. And the Foreign Affairs Committee will probe those issues among a host of others.

“But when this pandemic reached our shores, the President chose to drag his feet and hide the truth. This was never a hoax or a conspiracy. It was a dire threat to this country that the President ignored. That’s the reason the United States is now the epicenter of this crisis. Blaming the WHO will accomplish nothing and cutting off resources will only make things worse.”

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