The doubting, the questioning and the suspicion about the president of the United States never ends.

Donald Trump’s relentless lying about the coronavirus pandemic has become, if you’ll please pardon the intended pun, almost an epidemic of its own.

His downplaying of the crisis initially was bad enough. His declaration about the alleged ease of obtaining tests to determine exposure matched it. Then came the televised speech from the Oval Office, a venue reserved only for the most serious of matters. Trump bungled that, too, by declaring a travel ban, but failing to tell us that U.S. citizens who were in Europe would be able to return home.

None of this, of course, is surprising to millions of Americans … such as me. We have doubted this individual’s veracity at every turn. The Washington Post tally of lies/falsehoods/misstatements/prevarication is now past 17,000 — and counting! And that’s just in a single term, the end of which is nearly a year out!

Donald Trump is failing this critical test of presidential leadership. He has piled too many lies all around him to be able to climb toward any level of credibility. The lying has been non-stop, incessant since the moment he became a politician. He sought his first-ever public office — the presidency — by telling us a lie about how he became a zillionaire: He called himself “self-made,” but he lied about that! The lying hasn’t stopped.

So here is facing the worst crisis — one not of his making — of his presidency and his hideous record of lying has turned us all into a nation of skeptics. We can’t trust a single word that comes from this fellow. It’s even come to doubting the veracity of the White House announcement that he has been tested for the coronavirus.

So, the crisis will worsen. We’ll hear from medical experts, the truth tellers who surround the president. We’ll also hear from Donald Trump. I, though, will be among those who cannot trust his word.