Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said President Trump was right to threaten the World Health Organization’s funding over its response to the coronavirus.
Trump has suggested that funding to the WHO, which is an agency of the United Nations, should be cut because of its “China-centric” response to the virus. During an interview on Fox News on Monday, Haley said she supports Trump’s tough response to the organization.
“I think the president’s right to say we’re going to withhold money until we get some accountability out of this, and, you know, having worked with many of these U.N. agencies, they don’t like being told what to do, but they always have their hand out waiting for the money,” she said.
The former South Carolina governor added, “And, at the end of the day, this is — our citizens deserve to know that they’re getting a return on their investment.”
Haley stopped short of accusing China of corrupting the WHO, saying, “I think there is influence. And I think it has been growing. Over the past few years, we have seen China continue to show influence so that they can manipulate where the decisions are coming out.”
She outlined several instances in which the WHO followed China’s lead in a way that may have poured fuel on the pandemic, including the organization pushing a study from China that claimed the coronavirus could not spread between humans and the organization’s refusal to heed warnings from Taiwan about the virus because China does not recognize the nation’s independence.
Haley has called for a full investigation into the organization’s response to the pandemic. As of Monday, nearly 1.9 million people tested positive for COVID-19 globally, and more than 118,000 have died.
