Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, criticizes the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
She also bashed the government's decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO).
“There’s a lot of really important work that needs to be done, and the United States has to be in the middle of it, it cannot sit on the sidelines being indifferent, or even contemptuous of international efforts and expect that we’re going to benefit ourselves,” Hillary Clinton said during an interview hosted by the Atlantic Council.
“We should be having intense diplomatic conversations with health experts, logistics experts and others about how we are going to finally get to a safe and effective vaccine or perhaps even more than one, and then manage the distribution of it so that we try to bring the world together around defeating the pandemic, not permit the vaccine nationalism that is taking place right now,” Clinton said.
Last month, a senior administration official told CNBC that the Trump administration submitted its notice to withdraw from WHO to the US secretary-general by July 6, 2021.
This notice was the initial step in a yearlong process that will depend on several factors outside of President Donald Trump’s control, such as cooperation from Congress and his reelection in November, neither of which are certain.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has previously announced that he would have the US become a member of the WHO again on the first day of his presidency.
Meanwhile, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this month he hopes the US will reevaluate its decision to withdraw from the United Nations’ health agency, saying that the coronavirus cannot be fought “in a divided world.”
“The problem is not about the money. It’s not the financing that’s the issue. It’s actually the relationship with the U.S. that’s more important and its leadership abroad,” Ghebreyesus said during a virtual audience at the Aspen Security Forum.
“We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engage with them directly, but they have refused to act because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms,” Trump said in a previous speech in the White House Rose Garden.
“It was never about reforming the WHO. That was all lies,” the Democratic senator Chris Murphy, said on Twitter. “It was always about distraction and scapegoating. Leaving castrates our ability to stop future pandemics and elevates China as the world’s go-to power on global health. What a nightmare.”
“Let us hope that individual nations will learn lessons. But let us also hope that collectively we can put together a more robust and quick international response and get every nation to buy into it, so that you don’t have the role of any nation in the midst of a potential pandemic be too, you know, shut down and exclude investigation from international experts. We need to be more open and transparent,” Clinton said.
Clinton believes that the White House's hard-line approach would not address the crisis facing the nation.
“I would wish that rather than the behavior we’re currently seeing from the Trump administration we would see a more thoughtful smart engaged cooperative effort because that’s what it’s going to take," she said.
