President Donald Trump claimed that he thought of the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic “long before it was called a pandemic,” despite previously downplaying the crisis and attacking political concern over Covid-19 as a “hoax.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Trump took questions during a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing, where NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Trump about his sudden change in tone at a briefing the previous day.

“People did note that your tone did seem more somber yesterday, you talked about that August timeline. Did you see a projection some people thought perhaps that 2 million potentially that could die maybe prompted part of that, was there a shift in tone?” Welker asked.

“I didn’t think, I mean I have seen that where people actually liked it, but I didn’t feel different,” Trump said. “I’ve always known this is a, this is a real, this is a pandemic, I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

“All you had to do was look at other countries,” Trump continued. “I think now it’s in almost 120 countries all over the world. No I’ve always viewed it as very serious, there was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar but some people said it wasn’t.”

But Trump has taken criticism for weeks for downplaying the seriousness of the outbreak, and attacking concerns over it as a “hoax.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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