An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll released over the weekend indicated that Trump's statements on the coronavirus were trusted by only 36 percent of voters. This is a full 10 points lower than the share of voters who approve of his job performance overall.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted April 7-12 found 57 percent of Americans saying that Trump had done a "poor" or "only fair" job of giving accurate information on the crisis, while 42 percent said he was doing a "good" or "excellent" job. That was a notch or two worse than his overall approval rating, with 44 percent approving and 53 percent disapproving.

On one hand, the numbers may not be all that surprising. Trump's freewheeling performances at his near-daily press conferences have included hotly disputed claims about everything from the availability of tests to the likely effectiveness of anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19.

On Sunday alone, he repeated a previous false claim that he had "inherited" defective tests for the virus -- something that is an impossibility since the disease only emerged in recent months -- and suggested that "nobody ever thought" such a crisis could develop, despite long-standing fears about pandemics among public health officials.

There is also the broader issue of Trump's reputation for exaggeration and untruth. A running tally from The Washington Post asserted that the president had made more than 16,000 false or misleading claims in the three years between his inauguration and this January.