Trump Campaign Sues NBC Affiliate for Coronavirus Hoax Ad, Says It’s “Defamatory and False”

Many of the president's allies agree that Democrats have been using the "hoax" statement out of context.

Context matters.

President Trump never said that COVID-19 was a hoax.

In fact, prior to the rally where he said that the Democrat reaction was their "new hoax," Trump had already secured the United States border with China.

Trump did this before any other politician was even on board with the policy.

If Trump believed that the virus itself was a hoax, would he have secured the borders?

Likely not.

The New York Post has more on the defamation lawsuit from the Trump campaign:

President Trump’s campaign on Monday filed a lawsuit against an NBC affiliate in Wisconsin for running an anti-Trump ad the campaign called “false and defamatory,” including the claim that he referred to the coronavirus as “a hoax.”

“Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. today filed a lawsuit against WJFW-NBC of Rhinelander, WI for defamation in the wake of an advertisement carried by the station that contained intentionally false and defamatory statements about President Trump,” the campaign said in a statement.

The suit was filed in Price Count circuit court, and followed a cease-and-desist letter and supporting documents sent last month.

The ad was produced by Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Joe Biden, and uses Trump’s early quotes dismissing the severity of the coronavirus threat juxtaposed with a graph showing the soaring number of cases in the US.

“One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” read one of the quotes.

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said in another sound bite.

The ad also features the president’s use of the word “hoax” when discussing the virus.

The ad suggests that he was referring to the virus itself when he uttered it at a campaign rally, while Team Trump argues that he was referring to Democrats’ attacks on his handling of the threat as another hoax, the word he used to dismiss the Russia probe into his campaign and the House vote to impeach him over his call to the president of Ukraine seeking information on Biden.

While the quotes are accurate, the suit contends that the way they were presented creates the false impression that Trump’s statements came during the later stages of the pandemic.

Scientists have quietly admitted that Trump's early actions have saved an uncountable number of lives.

Community spread was always expected to happen in the United States, but thanks to President Trump, the outbreak is much smaller than the initial reactions.

For example, there was never a lack of ventilators, as many in the media breathlessly predicted.

So far, every patient in the United States who has needed a ventilator has been able to get one.

View Trump's COVID-19 "hoax" comments in context.

To anyone with an objective and open mind, it is clear that President Trump never called coronavirus a hoax.

He was calling the politicization of the crisis a hoax.

In other words, Democrats attempt to use everything to hurt President Trump.

When it comes to COVID-19, the Democrats weren't going to be any different.

They would use the crisis as another weapon to try to destroy Trump's credibility and steady approval ratings.

That is the "new hoax" that Trump is referring to.

The Western Journal has more details on the cease and desist letter the Trump campaign sent to the NBC affiliate:

“The Cease and Desist Letter explained, in relevant part, that the PUSA ad stitched together audio clips from candidate Trump’s statements to fraudulently and maliciously represent that he called the coronavirus pandemic a ‘hoax.’”

The lawsuit further claimed that “[the station] continued to broadcast the PUSA ad and therefore it continued to defame the Trump Campaign.”

“The false statements in the PUSA ad as broadcast by [the station] are intended to impede the purpose and goal of the Trump Campaign, by negatively impacting the Trump Campaign’s ability to reelect its candidate,” the lawsuit read.

The ad, which can be seen below, splices together soundbites of comments from Trump over a period of months while using a line graph that tallies confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S.

The clips used in the ad are from President Trump’s Feb. 28 rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, where he said that Democrats were pushing a narrative that he was not taking the threat from the coronavirus seriously.

“Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus,” Trump told supporters at the rally. “They have no clue, they don’t have any clue, they can’t even count their votes in Iowa.”

“This is their new hoax,” he added, referring to what he said would be his opposition’s new “talking point” after he was acquitted on two articles of impeachment in the Senate.

Trump’s statement was quickly taken out of context, and it was widely reported that he was describing the virus itself as a “hoax.”

The president explained the following morning at a media briefing with his coronavirus task force that he was referring to Democrats using the outbreak against him as a continuation of their attempts to undermine his presidency.

Predictably, some in the media are calling the lawsuit a war on freedom of the press.

However, the Trump campaign is fighting back against media outlets that intentionally and purposefully spin comments out of context to fulfill their political agendas.

If news outlets and reporters would do their job and quit trying to politicize reporting, then perhaps, this wouldn't be an issue.