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Sen. Tom Cotton said on Friday that the United States needs to know why China has “so much” influence over the World Health Organization amid the coronavirus outbreak.
“It’s important that we get to the bottom of exactly why [WHO Director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] has always acted as an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party,” the Republican Arkansas lawmaker told “The Brian Kilmeade Show.”
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Cotton responded to the head of the World Health Organization taking aim at President Trump’s criticism of the agency on Wednesday, telling him and other world leaders not to politicize the coronavirus crisis “if you don’t want many more body bags.”
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“If you don’t want many more body bags you refrain from politicizing it – please quarantine politicizing COVID,” Ghebreyesus told reporters in a lengthy answer when asked about Trump’s criticism of the agency.
A day earlier, the president had threatened to cut off funding.
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Cotton said the WHO was “repeating Chinese propaganda that minimizes the threat of the virus and claiming that there was no evidence that the coronavirus was not transmissible from human to human,” notwithstanding the fact that there was.
“I don’t see how you can view what Dr. Tedros was saying is anything other than a threat. I think part of that is designed to deflect attention away from the WHO’s obvious negligence in accepting what China has to say at face value.”
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“I think that’s why it’s important that we get to the bottom of exactly why China has so much influence with Dr. Tedros and WHO when [the United States] gives almost 10 times as much money as [China does]," he added.
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