‘The View’ co-host Joy Behar wrongly says Trump shut down 37 global anti-pandemic programs

Joy Behar, a co-host of ABC’s "The View," accused President Donald Trump of dismantling anti-pandemic programs the Obama administration set up across the globe.

Barack Obama "set up anti-pandemic programs in 47 vulnerable countries as a way to protect against something like the coronavirus, exactly," Behar said during the March 9 episode of the show. "Do you know that Trump closed 37 of them?"

The TV host’s claim is wrong, and it’s not entirely clear how she got her numbers, either.

Trump did fail to replace top national-security officials in charge of coordinating the U.S. response to pandemics, and he unsuccessfully sought to cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But he never slashed the programs Behar was referring to, however.

As the Washington Post noted, there were concerns among global-health leaders that U.S. funding for an initiative known as the Global Health Security Agenda was running out, and that some U.S.-run pandemic-prevention programs would have to be downsized as a result. 

But the Trump administration never pulled the plug on those programs, although it did propose smaller budgets. Congress has injected more money into them in recent budget requests.

One day after we reached out to ABC for comment, Behar made a tongue-in-cheek correction on air.

"The other day, I mistakenly said that Trump shut down anti-pandemic programs that Obama had set up in nearly 40 countries," Behar said. "I’m happy to say, he only attempted to cut funding for them, but that did not ultimately go into effect. Isn’t that good?"

The CDC has been operating public-health programs in a number of foreign countries as part the Global Health Security Agenda, which the United States helped launch in 2014.

The initiative — which now includes 67 countries — is a global effort to help countries reduce the risk of infectious diseases. 

The bulk of its early funding came from a one-time, five-year emergency spending bill that Congress approved in late 2014 to respond to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The package appropriated almost $600 million for the CDC "to support national public health institutes and global health security."

The CDC had hoped those funds would be replenished once the five-year supplement expired in October 2019, according to reports. But as the expiration date approached, it looked like the agency could be left with just the core annual budget to pull from.

National news outlets reported in the spring of 2018 that the CDC was bracing for a possible funding drop-off. The CDC planned to scale back operations in 39 of 49 countries and focus on 10 "priority countries," according to emails reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

In the end, however, Congress provided enough funding to sustain the programs, experts told us. (The White House and CDC did not respond to our requests for comment. The CDC told Factcheck.org it "did not have to cut back its work" to 10 countries.)

"The president's budget proposed slashing funding for CDC's (global health security) initiatives," added Claire Standley, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. "In the end, that didn't happen." 

The worry in early 2018 was that the budget for the CDC’s global disease-prevention programs would be just over $50 million, as it had been in past years, when the supplement from 2014 was still the primary funding source. Trump’s 2018 budget proposal put it in that ballpark.

But the budget Congress ultimately passed bumped the appropriations for "global disease detection and other programs" up to $108.2 million. The same amount was provided in 2019.

In November 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services pledged an additional $150 million "to support capacity strengthening in high-risk countries around the world" at a meeting in which the U.S. affirmed its commitment to the next phase of the Global Health Security Agenda.

The Trump administration’s 2021 budget request appropriated $225 million for the same global-health programs, up from $183.2 million in 2020.

As we’ve reported, Trump has consistently proposed cuts to certain CDC budgets, but the bills Congress ultimately passed — with Trump’s signature — have steadily increased funding for the CDC’s infectious-disease activities.

Experts said the administration’s wavering support has likely made it difficult for the CDC to plan out its activities.

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"I don't think the 37 out of 47 statement is accurate," Standley said. "But I do think that the Trump administration, in failing to provide consistent funding and clear indication of the priority placed on global health security capacity building, has made it difficult for the CDC to sustain the programs and successful efforts put into place since 2014."

"Programs weren’t shut down in the end, but you can also say that the administration didn’t prioritize them in the proposed budget," added Jennifer Nuzzi, an associate professor of public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It’s not clear why Behar referred to a shutdown of 37 of 47 programs when the 2018 news reports said the CDC was considering scaling back 39 of 49 operations. 

It’s possible she pulled from a tweet by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., whose claim that Trump "shut down 37 of 47 global anti-pandemic programs" was debunked by other fact-checkers. But however you crunch the numbers, it’s hard to get to 47 countries — or 49, for that matter.

Trump has put no one in charge of Coronavirus.

He is pushing cuts to the budgets of all the agencies that fight pandemics.

He shut down 37 of 47 global anti-pandemic programs.

Trump made a choice to make us vulnerable...to this pandemic and the next one and the next one.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 25, 2020

A 2019 annual report on the Global Health Security Agenda says the CDC provides financial support and technical assistance to 17 priority countries, plus technical assistance for 14 countries and CARICOM, a group of 15 Caribbean countries and dependencies.

One CARICOM country is Haiti, which is already listed among the countries receiving technical assistance from the CDC. Another is Montserrat, a British territory. 

That adds up to 44 total countries, or 50 if you include six other countries that Standley said received some early support specifically related to the Ebola outbreak. 

Behar said Obama "set up anti-pandemic programs in 47 vulnerable countries as a way to protect against something like the coronavirus" and "Trump closed 37 of them."

News reports in 2018 said the CDC was planning to shrink its operations to help foreign countries prevent infectious diseases because it didn’t expect to receive new funding once the supplement it received in 2014 ran out. But the programs didn’t shut down in the end.

The spending bill that lawmakers ultimately passed that year provided more money for those CDC programs than Trump’s budget request originally asked for.

Behar corrected her statement. We rate it False.