Donald Trump in 2016 (Credit: Wikipedia/Gage Skidmore)

Washington Post reporter Amber Phillips deleted a tweet and apologized for quoting Pres. Donald Trump about Coronavirus “out of context.”

Phillips had tweeted according to the Washington Examiner, “By late January, most intelligence reports for Trump were about covid-19. ‘The system was blinking red.’ Trump called it a ‘hoax’in late February.”

“My apologies for quoting the president out of context. As The Washington Post’s Fact Checker makes clear, he called Democrats politicizing coronavirus a hoax. I have deleted the incorrect tweet,” Phillips tweeted March 21.

Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper March 22 that Trump called coronavirus a hoax, Fox News reported.

Tapper responded to critics of him not correcting her on air by saying,

“I thought about it, because the president did not call the virus a hoax. But I didn’t because he *did* call a hoax the concerns of those saying that the response from the president was insufficient and that he was downplaying the gravity of the crisis. And that too was a lie. I guess that’s the problem with a politician who lies so often; while I agree that Democrats are mischaracterizing what he said, what he did say was also false so it’s tough to justify taking the time for a fact check when it’s not taking a stand defining the truth.”

iMediaEthics has written to CNN and the Post.