In this hard-hitting ad released earlier this month by Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC, a graph showing the rise in confirmed Covid-19 cases is superimposed over video clips of Trump repeatedly downplaying the spread of the pandemic.

In an apparent effort to help publicize the ad, a pro-Trump group is suing Priorities USA, claiming that the ad is “patently false, misleading and deceptive.”

Their quibble is a clip of Trump at a rally in South Carolina on Feb. 28 in which he says, “The coronavirus … this is their new hoax.”

Trump did make that statement, of course. It was part of a rambling, word-salad perambulation in which he went off on Democrats, accusing them of “politicizing the coronavirus,” and then railing against the Russia investigation and his impeachment. He buttoned it up, saying, “Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”

The day after the rally Trump tried to clean up the statement by suggesting that he did not say the pandemic was a hoax, but rather that he was referring to “the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody… I’m not talking about what’s happening here; I’m talking about what they’re doing. That’s the hoax.”

It’s lie upon lie upon lie from Trump, as we have learned. But there is fresh irony in a pro-Trump group’s suing over a misleading statement. That takes a lot of what GOP former Rep. Michele Bachmann calls “choots-pah.”