Associated Press reporter Jonathan Lemire explained on MSNBC Tuesday that President Donald Trump really wanted to spend the spring months attacking his Democratic opponents and working in full campaign mode. But the coronavirus crisis ruined his plans.

The New York Times revealed early Tuesday that Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro wrote a memo warning of the seriousness of the coronavirus back in January but was seemingly ignored.

“The latest piece of evidence, along with warnings from Secretary Azar, from the CDC and others that this president and the inner circle of this White House ignored, in favor of pushing forward with the economy over public health concerns,” said Lemire.

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace noted that Navarro is on the far-right of the political spectrum and in less than 24 hours after he was attacked for shouting down Dr. Anthony Fauci about testing the drug hydroxychloroquine before prescribing it, the memo from Navarro was released. She said she doesn’t like to speculate on motives but she found it suspicious.

Lemire explained that this is how the Trump White House generally works, it’s a series of rivalries and infighting to be in favor.

Wallace then played a clip of Trump saying that there was no need to fear the coronavirus and that Democrats were politicizing the coronavirus and was one big “hoax.”

Lemire explained that it’s a video that will likely be played in campaign ads over and over again into November.

“You hearing it from the president himself and the top aides, it’s a sense of denial and an attempt to rewrite history, suggesting that the president was on top of it,” said Lemire. “They point to the suspension of the flights from China, a useful step but not nearly enough. It wasn’t accompanied by other efforts, other measures that we have seen other countries take in order to slow the spread most notably the widespread testing.”

He went on to explain that the idea that the U.S. turned a corner and was going to be fine, isn’t actually happening and Americans know it.

“This is a president who’s in denial about this,” he continued. “He had, you know, it seems like a lifetime ago but just a month or two back he — the White House was feeling and his re-election team — was feeling really good about where they were. He had just beaten back impeachment, the economy was doing good, the Democratic field was a mess. And the president, with a huge campaign war chest, was excited to use this spring to attack his opponent Bernie Sanders and now most likely Joe Biden and use this time to pummel the Democrats and to set the tone for the campaign ahead. According to our reporting, he couldn’t come to grips with the idea and that that’s not what he was going to be doing anymore and that the number one argument for his re-election, a strong economy was about to vanish because of the growing threat of this virus.”

Watch the video below: