Trump tells a damnable and murderous lie - The Washington Post

Trump tells a damnable and murderous lie - The Washington Post:
by Dana Millbank
  “It would have been so easy to be truthful.” Thus spake President Trump this week on the very day he surpassed the milestone of uttering 18,000 falsehoods during his presidency, as tallied by the Post’s Fact Checker. 
 But on this day, Trump was not admitting to losing his own struggle with the truth. He was accusing the World Health Organization of “covering up the spread of the coronavirus” and failing to “share information in a timely and transparent fashion.” He declared he was cutting off funding for the world’s public health body in the middle of a pandemic.
The next day he called the WHO a “tool of China” and floated the vile conspiracy theory that the WHO deliberately concealed the danger of the virus: “There’s something going on” at the WHO “that’s very bad,” and "I have a feeling they knew exactly what was going on.” AD This is not merely a falsehood. 
This is a damnable and murderous lie. As Trump surely knows, and as I have learned from people with knowledge of the situation who spoke to me on the condition of confidentiality, 15 officials from his administration were embedded with the WHO in Geneva, working full time, hand-in-glove with the organization on the virus from the very first day China disclosed the outbreak to the world, Dec. 31. 
At least six other U.S. officials at WHO headquarters dedicated most of their time to the virus, and two others worked remotely with the WHO on covid-19 full time. In the weeks that followed, they and other U.S. government scientists engaged in all major deliberations and decisions at the WHO on the novel coronavirus, had access to all information, and contributed significantly to the world body’s conclusions and recommendations.
 Everything that the WHO knew, the Trump administration knew — in real time. As congressional investigators who requested WHO documents and communications are now learning, senior Trump administration officials — Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Robert R. Redfield Jr., Anne Schuchat, Ray R. Arthur and Jeffrey McFarland; the National Institutes of Health’s Anthony S. Fauci and H. Clifford Lane, and many others — consulted with the WHO throughout the crisis.