Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that he had "always" known the coronavirus outbreak was a pandemic. So a reporter asked him on Thursday: if he had known this, why was the country not prepared to do the necessary coronavirus testing?

Trump responded with a claim so inaccurate it bordered on nonsensical.

"We were very prepared. The only thing we weren't prepared for was the -- the media. The media has not treated it fairly," Trump said at a White House briefing.

Trump, conversely, for weeks downplayed the risk posed by the coronavirus. The media outlet he cites most frequently, Fox News, did the same

Trump and his team have made multiple inaccurate claims on the subject of coronavirus testing.

Trump has wrongly blamed a nonexistent rule change by President Barack Obama's administration for supposedly impeding testing. And Trump misled the public about the availability of tests, wrongly claiming on March 6 that "anybody that wants a test can get a test. That's what the bottom line is." (Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar claimed Trump was using "shorthand" for the fact that "we as regulators, or as those shipping the test, are not restricting who can get tested.")