President Trump announced Tuesday he was freezing all funding to the World Health Organization blaming it for accelerating the coronavirus pandemic by opposing travel bans from China, which Trump supported. 

‘Today I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging the spread of the coronavirus,’ Trump announced in the White House Rose Garden.

Trump said WHO’s ‘attack on travel restrictions put political correctness above life-saving measures.’

The US is the largest single contributor to the WHO, paying in some $893million between 2018 and 2019 which made up around 15 per cent of the agency’s total budget during that period.

So far in 2020 the US has agreed to pay some $57million in assessed contributions to the WHO – the largest single payment by a country.

Last week Trump said the US gives the WHO a total of $500million per year, which he has now put on hold.

Announcing the move, Trump again suggested the WHO had been doing the bidding of China, where the coronavirus outbreak began before spreading to the United States.

Trump pointed to the funding disparities between the two countries, which both fund the WHO.

The president said while American taxpayers pay around $400 to $500 million annually to the WHO, China pays a 10th of that, at around $40 million a year.

Yet since last week Trump has blasted the WHO for being too China-centric, a point he continued to make Tuesday.

‘The WHO pushed China’s misinformation about the virus saying it was not communicable and there was no need for travel bans,’ Trump said.

He said other countries who followed WHO’s advice experienced ‘great tragedies and missed opportunities from the early days.’

Meanwhile, he credited his decision to ban flights from China in late January with saving an ‘untold number of lives.’

At the briefing, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins brought up how Trump is punishing the WHO for praising China’s transparency when he, too, praised China’s transparency.

Several days before Trump decided to announce the partial travel ban, he praised China’s effort on Twitter.

‘China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency,’ Trump wrote on January 24. ‘It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!’

Trump sporadically praised China through February and March as well – while also occasionally calling coronavirus the ‘China virus.’

On Tuesday when asked if he was being hypocritical, Trump answered, ‘I’m always respectful of China,’ before bringing up the amount of money he believed he brought in because of the trade war, brushing off the question.