This article discusses President Trump’s April 2020 criticism of the WHO and China, including his reference to suspending U.S. funding. It also criticizes NHK’s reporting stance, its attitude toward Prime Minister Abe, and its excessive deference toward China and Xi Jinping, questioning the proper role of Japan’s public broadcaster.

April 9, 2020
There must be many viewers who remember that he repeatedly called Xi Jinping “Mr. Xi,” with an air of familiarity and affection.
Masayuki Takayama has written a book titled Trump Does Not Lie.
President Trump’s criticism of the WHO last night was exactly as the title says.
As for Tedros of the WHO, this column takes pride in having pointed him out first in the world, at least in the context of this present virus calamity.
But the reality that the WHO is controlled by China is precisely a case of the emperor having no clothes, and it must have been visible to all decent people throughout the world.
And yet, until President Trump spoke last night, not one leader of the G7, for example, had said anything.
Even though all of them have suffered the greatest damage since the war because of this truly corrupt WHO and China.
With that one statement last night alone, it is no exaggeration whatsoever to say that President Trump is entirely correct, and that he is the only leader who has boldly begun to prevent the world from being trampled underfoot by the dictators of the Chinese Communist Party.
President Trump showed the whole world that America is the leader of the world.
This is something Japan should originally have done long ago toward the United Nations and the UN Human Rights Council.
Stop providing funds.
Trump referred to this utterly natural and obvious measure.
One quarter of the WHO’s budget is sustained by funds from the United States.
“Let us see what happens to the WHO when the United States stops funding it.”
If this Trump were the prime minister of Japan, newspapers such as the Asahi Shimbun would undoubtedly be making a huge uproar, as if a hornet’s nest had been stirred up, shouting about disregard for the United Nations and so on.
There must have been many people who watched Prime Minister Abe appear live on NHK’s Watch 9 the night before last.
As Wakuda is newly appointed, there is still room for leniency in saying that her nervousness has not yet gone away.
But for Arima, this was not the first time Prime Minister Abe had appeared live before him.
Even from my immediate memory alone, it was the third time.
Yet Arima’s expression when facing Prime Minister Abe was as it had always been.
There must be many people who noticed that it was the expression of a man whose parents’ enemy was standing before his eyes.
I infer that his expression is the result of his daily words and actions.
In other words, it is probably because the conversations he has when he frequently eats and drinks with his close superiors consist of nothing but criticism of the administration and criticism of Prime Minister Abe.
Several years ago, when I saw Ogoshi, Kuwako, and Arima in an election special, shoulder to shoulder in an extremely intimate manner, chatting with the broadest smiles imaginable, I instantly understood that the attitudes of Arima and Kuwako reflected Ogoshi’s will.
They must be members of the Ogoshi faction.
For example, suppose a superior whom one frequently slanders over drinks suddenly appeared before one’s eyes.
That is the expression Arima wears when Prime Minister Abe is before him.
What I find truly outrageous about Arima is that this man, who does not even say “Mr. Abe” to our prime minister, who can without exaggeration be called one of the greatest in our history, repeatedly said “Mr. Ghosn,” “Mr. Son,” and even “Mr. Xi,” while looking at Kuwako with the broadest smiles imaginable.
There must be many viewers who remember that he repeatedly called Xi Jinping “Mr. Xi,” with an air of familiarity and affection.
Toward Ghosn and Son, he uses “Mr.” with such an expression; toward Prime Minister Abe, he faces him with the expression one would show to the enemy of one’s parents.
No decent viewer has forgotten the severity of his criticism of the administration during the Moritomo and Kake issues.
To begin with, the people who control Watch 9 are clearly the possessors of minds formed by reading and studying the Asahi Shimbun.
Otherwise, in their frequent opinion polls, they would not have continued inserting, as the top reason for not supporting Prime Minister Abe, an item such as “I cannot trust his character.”
Prime Minister Abe is precisely a man who, in the good sense, embodies the temperament of a well-brought-up gentleman.
Among the politicians of our history, he is, in every sense, a rare politician who possesses one of the finest characters, and any decent person can understand this.
All the leaders of the G7 must understand it directly.
Those who do not understand it, and could never understand it, are the people of the Asahi Shimbun, a company made up of madmen; the opposition political operators who sympathize with them; the so-called human-rights advocates; the so-called intellectuals; and the people who dominate NHK’s news division.
Whenever this NHK reports that President Trump has said something extremely reasonable, it invariably adds a comment implying that it is due to some arbitrary motive of his.
In other words, it inserts deference to China.
It is no exaggeration to ask: what country’s broadcasting station is this?
Trump speaks directly about what is visible to everyone, that there is an emperor with no clothes standing there and doing foolish things, because he has no need to be considerate toward anyone, and still less does he have any reason to be considerate toward China.
On the other hand, there are employees called anchors and the like, whose minds are made of masochistic views of history, pseudo-moralism, and pseudo-political correctness, who cannot be called journalists at all, whose actual nature is nothing more than that of highly paid national public servants, and whose ability to gather information is, without exaggeration, nonexistent.
They leave aside the fact that the true duty of a journalist is to devote oneself to reporting, training, and continuing deep study.
Instead, they gravely misunderstand criticism of the administration as the true duty of a journalist.
They are great fools.
These are the people who dominate NHK’s news division.
They cannot even see the emperor with no clothes.
No, they are strange people who are least able to criticize precisely the emperor with no clothes.
In other words, while they are utterly weak before the power of the lowest kinds of people, they criticize only the LDP government, even if they have to do so by means of fabrication.