Tuesday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on the heels of President Donald Trump’s announcement he was halting U.S. funding for the organization.
According to Pompeo, the W.H.O. failed its duties given the pandemic and noted it did little when it had an opportunity to do so before the global spread.
“The facts are, you talked about the World Health Organization,” he said. “They had access. The Chinese Communist Party didn’t give Americans access when we needed it, at the most timely point, at the very beginning. And the president talked about that today. And then we know they have this lab. We know about the wet markets. We know that the virus itself did originate in Wuhan. So, all those things come together. There’s still a lot we don’t know. And this is what the president was talking about today. We need to know answers to these things. We still have this virus out there. You talked about trying to get the economy going, not only here in the United States, but around the world.”
“We need answers to these questions,” Pompeo continued. “We need transparency. And we need the World Health Organization to do its job, to perform its primary function, which is to make sure that the world has accurate, timely, effective, real information about what’s going on in the global health space. And they didn’t get that done here.”
Pompeo applauded Trump’s announcement and outlined his expectations of the W.H.O.
“It was a difficult decision,” Pompeo explained. “The president made the absolute right call. Frankly, he did it in the face of a World Health Organization that suggested that such a restriction was unnecessary. We know that it benefited the world. It benefited America. It’s absolutely saved lives. You will recall too that the World Health Organization declined to call this a pandemic for an awfully long time, because, frankly, the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want that to happen. We need a health organization that’s going to deliver good outcomes for the world, and not do the bidding of any single country. We need accurate information, transparent information. We didn’t get it. And the world didn’t get that.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.