Here's the quote from the Snopes article:
> Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
> One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We’re 15 people [cases of coronavirus infection] in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.
Here is what you extracted from the quote:
- "What Trump actually said is that his opponents suggestion that he doesn't do enough to counter the epidemic is the next hoax"
But you condition this statement on a novel understanding of the word "hoax"
"This is somewhat unusual application of word "hoax", as "hoax" usually refers to false statement of fact, and whether Trump is doing a good job is not a fact but an opinion, which you can disagree with but it can't be "hoax"."
Of course, you spotted right away that he was "sacrificing precision for expressiveness."
To steelman the other side: given the unreliability of natural language, there is a tendency to construct your own interpretation and then work backwards, which I think you did there. in the quotation, he uses "hoax" to describe another event:
>They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation.
versus
> And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We’re 15 people in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.
Given the structural similarity and proximity of these two quotes, it seems clear what Trump is trying to do is to compare to these two instances and the similarity of the response from the Dems. In both, he very clearly says that his conversation with the Ukrainian President and the Coronavirus situation are both similarly germane. At the very least, it should be beyond question that Trump is downplaying the severity of the coronavirus in the last few sentences. It follows that the "hoax" is referring to the opposition party making a mountain out of molehill.
But I digress. The most important thing is that you have strong opinions on tribal politics and an apparent distrust of media. Which is fine and good! But it is also important to recognize that your interpretation could be different from someone else's, and that doesn't mean that they lied "because they hate Trump and think it's ok to sacrifice the truth for the noble goal of getting rid of Trump, somehow thinking when they do it, as opposed to Trump doing it, it's ok". You cannot assume all statements contrary to your own are made in bad faith.