President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he has no regrets about withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization. None. The question came as critics have argued the WHO withdrawal contributed to a slower American response to a recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise vessel in the Atlantic. Trump did not take the bait. Instead, he went straight to the numbers and the record. .@POTUS says he has no regrets in pulling out of the World Health Organization: “We were paying, for let’s say 350 million people, we were paying $500M a year… and China was paying $39M a year for 1.4 billion people.” “On Covid, they were totally wrong.” pic.twitter.com/JT2JDCsiiV — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 11, 2026 The United States, with roughly 350 million people, was paying about $500 million a year into the WHO. China, with 1.4 billion people, was paying about $39 million. That ratio has been a central grievance of the Trump administration since 2020, and the president clearly has no intention of letting anyone memory-hole it. “On COVID, they were totally wrong,” Trump added. He said the U.S. was not treated well by the organization despite being its largest funder by a wide margin. The withdrawal itself has been final since January. HHS and the CDC announced: The United States completed its formal withdrawal from the World Health Organization on January 22, 2026, after the one-year notice period triggered by President Trump’s January 20, 2025 executive order. The administration said the exit followed the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from inappropriate political influence by member states. During the withdrawal process, the United States stopped funding the WHO, withdrew U.S. personnel from the organization, and began shifting work that had been routed through the WHO toward direct bilateral engagements and other international partners. The official rationale was not a vague complaint about global health cooperation. It was a specific indictment of the WHO’s COVID record, its treatment of China, its governance problems, and its refusal to change after the failures Americans watched unfold in real time. That executive order, signed in January 2025, did more than start the withdrawal clock. The White House ordered: The January 2025 order directed federal officials to pause future transfers of United States government funds, support, or resources to the WHO. It also ordered the recall and reassignment of U.S. government personnel who were working with the organization, and it ended American participation in talks over the WHO pandemic agreement and related amendments to international health regulations. The order also told the administration to identify credible and transparent United States and international partners that could assume activities previously handled through the WHO. That matters because Trump did not present the withdrawal as a retreat from disease monitoring or global health work. He presented it as a change in who America trusts with taxpayer money, American personnel, and emergency-response coordination when an international bureaucracy has already shown it can fail under pressure. Critics have tried to use the hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise vessel in the Atlantic as evidence that the withdrawal left the United States more vulnerable to emerging infectious disease threats. Anadolu Agency reported: Trump was asked at the White House whether he regretted pulling the United States out of the WHO after critics argued the withdrawal may have contributed to a slower response to the hantavirus situation. He rejected that framing and said the country had not been treated well by the organization. He also pointed back to the WHO’s pandemic record, saying the organization had been wrong on COVID. The president emphasized the funding imbalance that has long animated his criticism of the organization. He said the United States was paying about $500 million per year while China, with a far larger population, was paying about $39 million. That contrast was the center of his answer. In Trump’s telling, the United States was expected to bankroll an institution that made bad calls, favored Beijing, and still expected American taxpayers to keep writing checks. The Trump War Room account amplified the same clip shortly after. .@POTUS on WHO: “We were paying, for let’s say 350 million people, we were paying $500M a year… and China was paying $39M a year for 1.4 billion people.” “On Covid, they were totally wrong.”pic.twitter.com/tUAI3UNH0W — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 11, 2026 The pattern here is familiar. Every time a new health concern surfaces anywhere on the planet, the same voices demand the United States rejoin the WHO and resume writing the checks. Every time, they conveniently skip over the reasons the U.S. left in the first place: a lopsided funding structure that let China ride free, a catastrophic COVID response that cost millions of lives, and an institutional culture more interested in protecting Beijing’s reputation than protecting public health. President Trump was asked a direct question and gave a direct answer. No regrets. The rationale has not changed, and neither has his position.