Jake Tapper admits Trump didn’t call coronavirus a ‘hoax’ after failing to correct AOC’s claim

CNN’s Jake Tapper said President Trump did not call the coronavirus a “hoax,” but he stopped himself from correcting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from erroneously making such a claim.

The New York Democrat joined Tapper on his CNN show Sunday and claimed, “We’re hearing it every step of the way from this administration. First, we were hearing it was a hoax. Then we were hearing that everything was fine. Then we were hearing that the fundamentals of the economy was OK until the crash comes. And we cannot wait until people start really dying in large numbers to start production.”

A Trump campaign staffer called attention to the Democratic congresswoman’s claim on Twitter, saying it “would’ve been a great time for a fact check” from Tapper, who declined to push back on the statement during the on-air segment.

The CNN anchor responded, “I thought about it, because the president did not call the virus a hoax.” But he didn’t point that fact out to Ocasio-Cortez “because he *did* call a hoax the concerns of those saying that the response from the president was insufficient and that he was downplaying the gravity of the crisis. And that too was a lie.”

Tapper’s acknowledgment followed a Washington Post reporter’s recent apology and deletion of a tweet in which she claimed Trump called the coronavirus a “hoax” during a campaign rally. She linked her apology tweet to a fact check from the Washington Post on a recent Joe Biden ad that cut quotes from a Trump rally, so it appeared the president said “coronavirus” and then “this is their new hoax.”

At a February rally, the president claimed Democrats’ criticism of his coronavirus response was their “new hoax” after impeachment.