Sen. Marco Rubio says World Health Organization is ‘unfortunately politicized’
Florida senator Marco Rubio, Small Business Committee chairman reacts to President Trump’s threat to withhold funds from the World Health Organization.
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Sen. Marco Rubio on Wednesday called for the resignation of the World Health Organization's leader for his conduct, including defending China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
“The WHO serves an important purpose. Unfortunately, it has been politicized,” the Republican Florida lawmaker said on "Fox & Friends."
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Rubio said that the organization has a “leadership problem” under its director, Tedros Adhanom, and that China has undertaken an effort to influence international organizations.
“China has undertaken an effort over the last 15 years to sort of infiltrate and exert influence over international organizations at the United Nations and, of course, the World Health Organization.”
Rubio was reacting to President Trump slamming the WHO for its "China-centric" views the day before. Trump also said that the global health agency's projections and pronouncements about the coronavirus pandemic have been routinely wrong.
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In an interview with Fox News' "Hannity" on Tuesday night, Trump said that the WHO had "strongly recommended" against America restricting travel from China, which he said was one of WHO's early flawed pronouncements.
The president noted that while the U.S. financial contribution to the WHO dwarfs that of China, the United Nations entity seems to be very concerned about its relationship with Beijing.
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Rubio said that there is evidence of the politicization of the WHO at the highest levels.
“What you saw early on in this pandemic is they went to China and came out saying that ‘China is doing a great job — everything they’re saying is true’ and then condemning, not just the U.S., but also condemning any country that considered bans on travel from and to China,” Rubio said.
Rubio also said that the WHO should not make public health announcements under duress from any country in the world.
“It should be making announcements under the basis of medical science,” Rubio said. "I hope that, at a minimum, we can get the leader of that organization to resign because he has definitely been politicized."
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