FALSE: Trump says COVID-19 is a ‘hoax’ – Kamala Harris

Claim:

US President Donald Trump said the coronavirus was a hoax.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris made this claim during the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate on Thursday, October 8. Harris brought up how the government knew of the COVID-19 threat as early as January and said, “They knew, and they covered it up. The president said it was a hoax. They minimized the seriousness of it.”

Harris also referred to the audio recordings from interviews with veteran US journalist Bob Woodward released last September, where Trump had admitted to trying to minimize the seriousness of the COVID-19 threat at the outset of the pandemic.

Rating: FALSE

The facts:

Trump did not call the coronavirus a hoax. He referred to the Democrats’ criticism of the administration as a “hoax,” not the coronavirus.

Harris was echoing this claim from Democratic presidential bet Joe Biden’s campaign videos released in March and September. The videos spliced clips from the president’s February 28 rally in North Charleston, South Carolina.

The videos were edited to depict Trump saying, “Coronavirus – this is their new hoax,” or a similar iteration.

The full quote, however, slammed Democrats for politicizing the virus and criticizing the Trump administration: “One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was not a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”

When asked about his “hoax” remark during a February 29 press conference, he said, “‘Hoax’ referring to the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody ’cause we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them. I’m not talking about what’s happening here. I’m talking [about] what they’re doing,” referring to Democrats. “That’s the hoax.”

Other fact-checkers, such as CNN, the Associated Press, and the The Washington Post, have also called out Harris and the Biden campaign for making this misleading claim.

In spite of this, Trump had downplayed the threat of the virus since the beginning of the pandemic and fed conspiracy theories that Democrats and the media have fabricated the threat to hurt the economy and his chances of reelection. He was also found to be the biggest driver of COVID-19 misinformation, according to a study published in October.

When asked during the 2020 Vice Presidential Debate how an administration under Democratic Presidential bet Joe Biden could have handled the pandemic better, Harris called the government’s pandemic response “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of [their] country.” – Jo Comuyog, Loreben Tuquero/Rappler.com

This article was written by a Rappler volunteer or intern and reviewed by a member of Rappler’s research team and a senior editor. Learn more about Rappler’s internship program here.

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