https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...
However his rhetorical style is to put emotionally laden words in close conjunction and then repeat them over and over again. People therefore walk away with an emotional message that does not necessarily logically follow from any facts that they were given.
At an emotional level, he is associating COVID-19, Democrats and hoax. With the message that everything that Democrats say is a hoax, including what they say about COVID-19.
From the page you linked: "During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." During the speech he also seemed to downplay the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu."
A transcript of his exact words at the rally: "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."
How does this differ from the person you responded to who said, "Trump did not call COVID-19 a hoax"?