Continuing to show on Monday an unrivaled level of accessibility among U.S. presidents, President Trump took questions for nearly 42 minutes during a maternal health event and, while most concerned Iran, a USA Today reporter had questions at two different points about the U.S. response to the spread of the hantavirus, tying it to the Trump administration’s departure from the World Health Organization (WHO) and arguing it’s left the world more dangerous.
USA Today’s Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy delivered the first set of missives right at noon Eastern, wondering what Trump made of “the handling of the hantavirus by the U.S.” and this outbreak of this deadly virus aboard a cruise ship made him “regret withdrawing from the WHO.”
.@USAToday’s @SwapnaVenugopal Ramaswamy: “What do you think about the handling of the hantavirus by the U.S.?”
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 11, 2026
President Trump: “I think —
Ramaswamy: “Do you regret withdrawing from the WHO given that —”
Trump: “— no. I’m glad. So we were paying the World Health Organization… pic.twitter.com/25EDenhL93
Trump didn’t hesitate, saying he’s “glad” because “we were paying the World Health Organization $500 million a year” but “weren’t being treated well, and they were making the wrong diagnoses” on the coronavirus.
“I was the one that said it came from Wuhan. They didn’t say that. They refused to say that because they were totally owned by China. So, I was saying it came from Wuhan. They didn’t want to say that. Now it’s turned out, I think it’s been conclusive that it came from Wuhan. But I said that on the first day because I saw satellite pictures with body bags all over Wuhan, literally all over Wuhan. So, I said that they lied to me or they didn’t know,” he explained.
Later, he did weigh on the rat-borne virus:
Now, the one thing with this one is that it’s much harder to catch, and we’ve had it for a long. We’ve — it’s been around for a long time. People are very familiar with it. So, you know, I hope it’s fine. All I can do is everything that a president can do, which is some which is actually somewhat limited. But — but it seems like it is not easy to spread. In fact, it’s, in certain ways, very hard to spread. It’s been — we’ve — we’ve lived with it for years, many years. And we think we’re in very good shape. We’re very careful. And Nebraska has done a fantastic job. They have a — a — a place there that. Those doctors are unbelievable. The job they’ve done
14 minutes later, Ramaswamy asked Trump to empathize with “infectious diseases experts who say they are worried the country may not be prepared to deal with something like hantavirus because of all the HHS, you know, funding and staffing cuts.”
.@USAToday’s @SwapnaVenugopal Ramaswamy: “What do you say to infectious diseases experts who say they are worried the country may not be prepared to deal with something like hantavirus because of all the HHS, you know, funding and staffing cuts?”
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 11, 2026
President Trump: “Well, I think… pic.twitter.com/CSAx7kSeYz
After Trump scoffed that “we take care of [the virus],” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Dr. Oz took the proverbial mic because he was not having any of this:
It’s just not true. Jay Bhattacharya has taken this task on. Secretary Kennedy is involved with them. You can speak to him perhaps even better than best in the room, but the country is prepared and the CDC is focused on it. And — and the agency is — is well aware of the opportunities to actually treat this problem, not just try to prevent it in the future, but treat it if it happens now.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “teams” have been “on it since day one” and he “was speaking with the University of Nebraska since the second day of the outbreak.”
“We have this under control, and we’re not worried about it,” he asserted.
Ramaswamy countered with this claim that “the CDC took four days...to issue an alert” was a problem, but Kennedy pointed out an official public notification “means nothing” given the behind-the-scenes preparations (and, we would add, it being the number one news story for over a week).
It was here that Trump blasted Ramaswamy:
Give me — give me a break. They acted very, very quickly. And it looks like — and, you know, you can’t bet anybody’s life on it, but it looks like it’s just a disease that we’ve had around in a very small way for a long time. Not a good one to catch because, you know, it’s a very severe disease if you catch it, but it’s very hard to catch.
To see the relevant transcript from May 11, click here.
