Day 1,153: Just 37% trust Trump’s coronavirus information

Donald Trump has spent months bungling the U.S.’s coronavirus response. In reality, the short-term debacle has been three years in the making.

Trump’s response has remained woefully inadequate, even through Tuesday. Valuable resources remain sidelined as Americans continue to fall ill and the disease spreads.

Testing has been grossly insufficient.

And yet, asked to rank his performance, Trump unsurprisingly gave himself 10 out of 10.

Trump has treated the pandemic as he does everything else in life: like a spectacle ripe for TV viewing.

So it shouldn’t be a shock that Americans, concerned about their health, overwhelmingly don’t trust information out of Trump’s mouth when it comes to the coronavirus.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Tuesday shows that only 37 percent of those polled have either “a good amount” or “a great deal” of trust in the the information they hear from the president about the coronavirus, while 60 percent say they do “not very much” or “not at all” trust Trump’s words on the subject.

Among those surveyed, the president’s trust ratings regarding the coronavirus rank lower than other prominent sources of information, including the news media, state and local governments, and public health experts. More Americans than do not disapprove of the way he is handling the pandemic, 49 percent to 44 percent, and his overall job approval rating rests at 43 percent.

The poll’s results come after the White House spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus threat to the United States, even as public health officials within the administration sounded alarms over its risk to the country and warned of its rapid rates of transmission.

Trump called the virus a “new hoax” less than three weeks ago. That has been the mere tip of the iceberg that has led to three in five Americans disbelieving his statements about the on-going crisis.

1,153 days in, 309 to go

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