In an op-ed for The Washington Post this Wednesday, Greg Sargent contends that President Trump's decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) is an attempt to paint a portrait of himself as an effective leader who holds people accountable for their failures. "In just about every conceivable way, this is the opposite of the truth," Sargent writes.
"In making this new move, Trump is inviting us to review the basic timeline of events. And it demonstrates that the WHO, for all its initial failures, was still far ahead of Trump in embracing the need for a comprehensive response to coronavirus."
According to Sargent, Trump is resorting to "ridiculous scapegoating" in order to erase his own central role in the spread of coronavirus.
Sargent acknowledges that the WHO's initial mistakes in the early days of the outbreak deserve criticism. "But cutting off funding as a punishment is counterproductive and deeply absurd," he writes. "Indeed, even if you accept that the WHO committed serious errors, the timeline is still far more damning to Trump, by the terms that he himself has set through his criticism of the organization."
Read the full op-ed over at The Washington Post.