As part of his blitz of executive orders issued yesterday, President Trump also delivered on a campaign promise to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization.

The White House accuses the WHO of mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic, biased towards China, and says the U.S. is forced to pay more than its fair share to support the international organization.

For more on the potential implications of this, we're joined now by Lawrence Goston,

law professor and director of the World Health Organization and collaborating center at Georgetown University.

Lawrence, welcome back. Thanks for being with us. You know,

in your Washington Post op-ed today, you said leaving the WHO would be what you called a grave

mistake that would hurt Americans. How so? What's the potential harm here? Well, thank you for having

me. I believe this is a truly historic decision.

The United States really formed the World Health Organization in 1948

and has been its most influential and greatest funder for 75 years.

This is going to make America decidedly less safe, less secure.

And it's hard for me to think of any national advantage that we get. I only see us alone and

isolated are not stronger. You mentioned the U.S. has been its greatest funder for W.HO.

If you take a look at this graphic, we should just point out, this look at the top 10 sources

of funding there, the U.S. there at the top, but there's other groups like the World Bank,

the Gates Foundation, countries like Germany, UK, and Japan, but the U.S. is responsible

for some one-sixth of the organization's budget. So is President Trump's characterization that the U.S. is responsible for some one-sixth of the organization's budget.

So is President Trump's characterization that the U.S. is shouldering an unfair financial burden here wrong?

Yes, actually. I think it is wrong, but it's not totally wrong. Let me explain. The WHO has a budget of roughly one quarter of the U.S.

CDC. So for a global institution, it's chronically underfunded. It doesn't have the resilience

and funding that it needs to put out fires all over the world.

So the United States shouldn't pay less, but other countries should pay more.

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