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U.S. President Donald Trump sharply criticized the World Health Organization on Tuesday, accusing it of being too focused on China and issuing bad advice during the new coronavirus outbreak and saying he would put a hold on U.S. funding for the agency.

“The W.H.O. really blew it,” Trump said in a Twitter post. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”

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However, Dr. Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO Director-General, defended the U.N. agency’s relationship with China, explaining that its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak which began in Wuhan.

“It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,” he told reporters. “This is what we did with every other hard hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically.”

Trump repeated the accusations against the U.N. health organization at a White House news briefing later on Tuesday, with assertions to cut back U.S. funding to the group.

“They called it wrong. They really — they missed the call,” the president said. “And we’re going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We’re going to put a very powerful hold on it and we’re going to see.”

U.S. contributions to WHO in 2019 exceeded $400 million, almost double the 2nd largest member state contribution. China, in contrast, contributed $44 million.