At a White House briefing Tuesday, President Trump said he has always taken the threat of coronavirus seriously.

Trump was asked if his tone about the disease had become more "somber" in recent days.

"I've always known this is a real — this is a pandemic," Trump said, adding that he "felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

In the past, Trump had called the alarm over coronavirus a "hoax" used by Democrats to try to hurt him politically and inaccurately compared it to the flu.

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At a Tuesday press conference dedicated to the government's coronavirus response, President Donald Trump said he has "always viewed it as very serious."

Trump's response was prompted by a question from NBC News' Kristen Welker, who asked whether his tone on the coronavirus had shifted to a more "somber" one.

"I have seen that where people actually liked it, but I didn't feel different. I've always known this is a real — this is a pandemic," Trump said. "I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

In fact, at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Trump repeatedly downplayed threat, inaccurately comparing it to the flu and telling his supporters that growing worry about the coronavirus was a "hoax."

At a February 28 rally in Charleston, South Carolina, Trump told thousands of cheering fans that "the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus."

"One of my people came up to me and said, 'Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.' That did not work out too well." Trump told the crowd. "They could not do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. ... They tried anything. ... And this is their new hoax."

When criticism of his administration's response ramped up, he tried to compare the coronavirus to the flu.

As recently as March 9, Trump continued to say the flu was more dangerous than the coronavirus and that Democrats and the press were inflaming the public reaction to the coronavirus. But his own top infectious-disease expert, Anthony Fauci, said in congressional testimony that the coronavirus is 10 times more lethal than the flu. Trump's administration is now taking "unprecedented" steps to curb the spread of the virus, he said.