The truth has no place on NBC News. During NBC’s Sunday Today, host Willie Geist continued to push the long-debunked accusation that President Trump called the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) a “hoax” at a Friday campaign rally in South Carolina. On top of that, Geist suggested it took the first death of an American in the U.S. to get the President to cut it out and take the situation seriously.

“President Trump, meanwhile, held a rare Saturday news conference to give another update on coronavirus. He was pressed about his comments at a rally Friday night where he called coronavirus a Democratic hoax against his presidency,” Geist lied at the top of the segment.

Geist’s false accusation was actually the reverse of what the network was saying as recently as the previous evening. According to NBC White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell, during Saturday’s NBC Nightly News, “But here, the President did not repeat his controversial comment at a rally Friday, accusing Democrats of politicizing coronavirus.” O’Donnell was reporting on how Trump addressed COVID-19 at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Listening to what the President said on Friday, in context, it was clear he was talking about how Democrats were trying to stoke fear with false claims the administration was not doing much to combat the virus. But that didn’t stop NBC correspondent Hans Nichols from falsely suggesting Trump tried to spill his comments during a Saturday press conference:

President Trump was pressed to clarify his Friday night comments when he called concerns about coronavirus the Democrats' new hoax, suggesting that Democrats were inflating the threat for political advantage. Now, in that surprise press conference yesterday, the President tried to explain that the hoax he was referencing had nothing to do with the very real public health risk.

A few minutes later, Geist was speaking with NBC political director and moderator of Meet the Press, Chuck Todd about Trump’s supposed change in how serious he was taking the virus. According to Todd, it took the death of an American to get him to change his tone.

“I do think something changed when we had the first American death. I mean, you saw the President's tone changed a lot yesterday afternoon,” Todd asserted. “I do think the attitude inside that White House has completely changed since the death … and I could feel it in the sit-down I had with the Vice President, I think that's changed their mindset a bit.”

Geist concluded their conversation with the blatant charge that it was a “shame that it took a death to get them there.”

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: