The timeline of Trump's attacks on the WHO

On Monday, the US President Donald Trump threatened the World Health Organisation (WHO) with the permanent cutting off of all US funding of $450 million a year unless the organisation commits to “substantive improvements” in the next 30 days.

“I cannot allow American taxpayer dollars to continue to finance an organization that, in its present state, is so clearly not serving America’s interests,” he said. 

This isn’t the first time. Trump has repeatedly accused the WHO of being China-centric and unduly influenced by the country by stating that the agency has been “curiously insistent” on praising the country’s “alleged transparency”.

Following this recent attack of the WHO, here we list some of the US President’s other accusatory moments against the organisation:

April 7:

Following other health experts, government officials and analysts, who openly criticised the WHO in its immediate response to the outbreak, President Trump’s tirade against them began on April 7.

The President accused the WHO of being biased towards China. On this day, during the daily coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, he warned that as a result, members of his administration would take a look at US contributions to the WHO.

"They called it wrong, they really, they missed the call. Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?” he said.

On US financial support and its contributions to the organisation, Trump said: "We're going to put a hold on money spent... we're going to put a very powerful hold on it and we're going to see."

The incident took place just after the US recorded an alarmingly high daily death toll of almost two thousand people. 

April 17:

The President accused the WHO of making “several claims about the Coronavirus that were either inaccurate or misleading” in January and February.

In his tweet, Trump said: “Why did the W.H.O. ignore an email from Taiwanese health officials in late December alerting them to the possibility that CoronaVirus could be transmitted between humans? Why did the W.H.O. make several claims about the CoronaVirus that were either inaccurate or misleading....”

May 1:

Underfire for his administration's handling of the pandemic in the US, President Trump accused the WHO for being too slow, something he believed paved the way for its devastating global spread.

During her delivery of a 30-minute briefing on behalf of the administration, Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said: “The WHO appears to clearly have a China bias”.

“I mean, you look at this timeline and it’s really damning for the WHO when you consider the fact that on 31 December you had Taiwanese officials warning about human-to-human transmission, the WHO did not make that public,” she said.

Added to this, on 9 January, the WHO repeated China’s claim that the virus does not transmit readily between people - something we now know is false. On 14 January, the WHO again repeated China’s talking points about no human-to-human transmission.

May 19:

Recently, Trump has escalated his threats against the organisation. He explained that the US will permanently pull US funding of the organisation unless it “commits to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days."

In his letter to the WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which he also posted on Twitter, Trump said: "It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world. The only way forward for the World Health Organization is if it can actually demonstrate independence from China."

He also said that his administration has already started discussions with the WHO on how to reform the organisation, while adding that the US will "reconsider our membership" unless unspecified improvements are made.