Rep. Matt Gaetz said he and other Republican members of Congress were tipped off over the weekend that President Trump was considering permanently pulling funding from the World Health Organization.
“I observed compelling arguments particularly from my congressional colleagues on the fallacy of that relationship with the World Health Organization,” Gaetz told the Daily Caller on Monday. “It is my expectation that the United States will not be engaging as a funder of the World Health Organization now, at the China level, at any other reduce level — in the absence of major structural changes.”
Trump threatened Monday night to make his temporary halt in funding to the WHO permanent if the group did not commit to substantive improvements.
“My Administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization,” Trump said in a letter to the WHO’s director-general. “But action is needed quickly. We do not have time to waste. That is why it is my duty, as President of the United States, to inform you that, if the World Health Organization does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of United States funding to the World Health Organization permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization.”
Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill have repeatedly blamed China for the spread of the coronavirus and said the WHO did not properly vet China’s claims about the dangers the pandemic posed to the rest of the world.
“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.
Gaetz said during the group’s recent trip to Camp David that fellow Republican Rep. Jim Jordan repeated a quote from colleague Rep. Louie Gohmert that “resonated” with the president: “We don’t have to pay these globalist organizations to hate us, they’ll probably do it for free.”
