Friday on MSNBC, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) accused President Donald Trump of not accepting the facts about the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, which cost lives and the economy.

Pelosi also said Trump called this pandemic a “hoax.”

On February 28, at a campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump compared the Democrats’ criticism of his administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic to impeachment by saying, “this is their new hoax.”

On the protests against stay home orders, Pelosi said, “I won’t take the bait. This is another example of the distraction that they want to make from the fact that the president had said that this pandemic was a hoax, and that’s not true. That the president said, it will magically disappear. That’s not true. Again and again, he was in denial and delay in dealing with this. This is just a distraction. Don’t fall for that. Don’t take the bait.”

Anchor Ari Melber said, “Looking at the economic hardship, which of course, is part of the bill you mentioned that you’re working on — Washington Post reporting 22 million unemployed. This was wiped out a decade of job gains.”

He continued, “The U.S. has not seen this level of jobless, the Post reports, quote, since the Great Depression. Speaker, do you view this as simply a product of this tough pandemic, or do you view this as a Trump recession?”

Pelosi answered, “It’s probably a combination. Let’s right now talk about the pandemic because that’s a matter of life and death. We’re in the situation that we’re in because early into this, the president refused to accept the facts.”

She continued, “So the situation we’re in is largely of his making, calling it a hoax, saying magically it will disappear, not calling upon the Defense Production Act to protect the workers who are trying to save lives as they risk their own lives in doing so.”

Melber said, “You just laid out your view of his failures coming from the Trump White House on down. Do you think those failures cost lives?”

Pelosi said, “Yes, I do. I think delaying were deadly. So you say okay, that’s what I didn’t know. The reason I’m speaking out and I sent a letter to my colleagues which I’m overwhelmed by the response I received nationally and from my colleagues insisting on the truth is let’s not continue on a path of misrepresentation and falsehood, let’s get to the science, the evidence, the data, and facts.”

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