WATCH: Democrat spreads misinformation about Trump at House hearing to combat misinformation

During a congressional hearing on combatting misinformation on Wednesday, Congressman Tony Cardenas (D-CA) falsely claimed that former President Donald Trump said that being ethnically Asian causes coronavirus.

"The former President of the United States, Trump, trying to encourage people to believe that people who are Chinese or Asian are the cause of why so many Americans have died from the coronavirus," Cardenas stated.

The former President has not made such a claim, although he has repeatedly referred to the virus as the "China virus," a reference to its origins in the People's Republic of China.

Democrats have frequently argued that the label "China virus" is racist, noting that there has been an unprecedented rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans since the coronavirus pandemic began.

Republicans have contrarily countered that the phrase is meant to lay clear blame on the government of China for allowing the virus to spread and allowing for the conditions under which the virus emerged in the first place to exist.

The Chinese government has continuously spread disinformation about the origins of the virus, and at the beginning of the pandemic spread disinformation covering up the severity of the virus, much of which was repeated by the World Health Organization. In the early days of the pandemic, the Chinese government falsely claimed that the virus does not spread human to human and campaigned against travel restrictions on China.