Rachel Maddow: Trump letter threatening WHO reads like ‘some crank calling in at the end of the Rush Limbaugh show’

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow called President Trump’s letter to the World Health Organization this week “insane” after he threatened to stop funding the group permanently if it did not “commit to substantive improvements” following the outbreak of the coronavirus.

In his letter Monday, Trump told the WHO director-general: “We know the following. The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal.”

The Lancet, one of the most respected peer-reviewed medical journals, said it had no knowledge of any reports the journal published regarding the coronavirus in China.

“This statement is factually incorrect,” the Lancet said Tuesday, clarifying it knows of “no report in December 2019 referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China.”

Maddow called the apparently incorrect information in Trump’s letter “embarrassing.”

“We’re beyond shame at this point, but it just is. I’d just like to note for the record that it is humiliating that this is the behavior of our government,” Maddow said. “It is so embarrassing that this is the kind of thing the White House sends out these days in the name of the American people. I mean, did you even look that up before you put it in the letter to the WHO?”

Maddow continued, mocking the White House staffers who worked on the letter: “‘Oh, there was stuff in the Lancet in early December about Wuhan. I heard it.'”

The host asked: “What, on talk radio or on Fox & Friends or something? And so, without checking whether or not that was true, you just put it in a letter in writing and sent it to the World Health Organization?”

She added: “You’re not some crank calling in at the end of the Rush Limbaugh show, right, to get your dittos. You are the White House speaking on behalf of the government of the most powerful and previously most respected country on Earth.”

Since the pandemic began, Trump has been sharply critical of the WHO, which he and his allies argue did not properly vet information it was being fed from China regarding how the virus spreads and the dangers it poses to global health.

“Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China’s lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death,” Trump said in April as he announced he was temporarily suspending funding to the group.

Limbaugh, who Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year and who defends Trump daily on his nationally syndicated talk radio show, has downplayed the threat of the virus, comparing it with “the common cold” and saying the pandemic was being “weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump.”

Maddow argued Trump’s recent letter to the WHO went further than just “blaming someone, anyone else” for the federal government’s slow response to the pandemic.

“I mean, it’s one thing to be like defunding the WHO and blaming them for what we’ve done wrong,” she said. “It’s another thing to be completely incompetent at even trying to ineffectually insult someone whose help we need.”

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