President Donald Trump and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney both believe that the outrage over coronavirus being directed at the administration by both congressional Democrats and their glaringly partisan media allies is part of yet another “hoax” designed solely to hurt the president.

“Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus,” Trump bluntly said during a re-election campaign rally Friday in Charleston, South Carolina, describing how Democrats are using every opportunity to attack him and his administration over their coronavirus efforts.

The irony is rich, he added, given that they themselves “cannot even count the votes in Iowa.”

Listen to him below (disable your adblocker if the video doesn’t appear):

Despite their own shortcomings, Democrats and their allies are nevertheless desperate to hurt the president in any way, he continued, citing their past actions as evidence.

“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,” he said. “They couldn’t do it.”

“They tried the impeachment hoax. That was a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over again. They’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. And this is their new hoax.”

Pivoting his attention to his administration’s coronavirus efforts, he added, “We did something that has been pretty amazing. We have [only] 15 people in this massive country [who are infected by coronavirus] and because of the fact that we went early.”

Was he right? According to Mulvaney, it appears he was.

Speaking with economist Stephen Moore at the Conservative Political Action Committee this Friday, he described the coronavirus outrage as the “hoax of the day” and pointed to how the administration had been pursuing prevention methods long before either congressional Democrats or their media allies began screeching about it.

“My first meeting with Congress, face-to-face, was probably six weeks ago on coronavirus. … We take the medical experts down, we put them in front of Congress five, six weeks ago. Five senators show up. Ten, fifteen members of the House of Representatives show up. We were way ahead [of the issue],” he said.

“Just who was asleep, right?” Moore responded.

“Several weeks ago, we put restrictions on travelers coming in from China. We were accused by some on the left of being racist for doing that. I’m not making that up. That was in the press. This was an anti-Asian policy that we’re doing this,” Mulvaney added.

Listen to his remarks below:

“The last time we enforced a federal quarantine was 1969 for small pox. We did it over a month ago in this administration in order to prevent a further outbreak in this country. We took extraordinary steps four or five weeks ago. Why didn’t you hear about it? What was still going on four or five weeks ago?” he continued.

“Impeachment. And that’s all the press wanted to talk about. So while real news was happening, and we were dealing with it … the press was covering their hoax of the day because they thought it would bring down the president. The reason you’re seeing so much attention to it today is that they think this is what’s going to bring down the president. That’s what this is all about.”

He noted for instance how the left is now blaming the stock market’s precipitous drop this week on who else but the president.

Late Friday, the hashtag #TrumpCrash began to trend among the “Twitterati”:

What Trump can’t realize is that by not investing big money to deal with the virus now, he made the market worse. #TrumpCrash — Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) February 27, 2020

People are missing the larger point. The #TrumpCrash represents over two months of failed preparation from this administration and the market is just now starting to realize that. The stock market represents the lack of preparedness. We need to do that work now. — dan rolle (@danrolle) February 29, 2020

Trump is a guy who looked at 9/11 and bragged about how it made one of his buildings “the tallest” in downtown Manhattan. Honestly, the way Trump is handling #coronavirus makes me think he shorted the market a week ago.#TrumpCrash — Steve Marmel (@Marmel) February 28, 2020

.#TrumpCrash is trending. I think the more correct trend would be #GOPSenateCrash since Trump is addled with the IQ of an acorn + myriad pathological disorders & GOP Senators were smart enough to know that & KNOWINGLY allowed a psychopath to endanger all of us. They are to blame. — Nancy Lee Grahn (@NancyLeeGrahn) February 29, 2020

Who’s handling a possible pandemic?

The absolute wrong people.

President Obama would have given a coherent speech, decent advice and we’d have all – diligently, cautiously – gotten on with our lives.

Instead, we have Trump and THESE idiots:#coronavirus #TrumpCrash #Pencedemic pic.twitter.com/cNHeP1I1gR — Steve Marmel (@Marmel) February 28, 2020

if only everyone in the world had foreseen and foretold this. oh. wait. all the decent people did.#TrumpCrash https://t.co/mPgCXzPr2s — Thorne Identity ? (@GeoffThorne) February 28, 2020

As seen above, this hashtag is based on the Democrat- and media-peddled lie that the Trump administration did nothing to prepare for a coronavirus outbreak.

None of this is to suggest that the coronavirus pandemic is itself a hoax. Despite additional lies otherwise, the president clearly recognizes the threat of coronavirus. But what neither Democrats, their media allies or other left-wing propagandists won’t tell you is that he and his top officials recognized the threat of it long before they ever did.