Hi Jerry,
This has come up quite a bit on the Herman Cain Awards site.
These aren't my thoughts, and I'm paraphrasing the actual comments, but I think they summed it up well.
It's partially that he simply wasn't capable of doing it.
For the pandemic, he downplayed the seriousness of it, mainly to try to protect the economy and the stock market (which took serious hits) at the expense of the pandemic taking off.
He also saw that it was affecting 'blue' areas more, and minimized it knowing it would hurt his opponents more (and it did at the beginning).
Remember how he stated that aid would go to states where the governors were nice to him?
He has no ability to care about anyone else, or anything that doesn't affect him directly.
But that was only part of it.
Don't forget his supporters.
The ones who cheered when he called Mexicans rapists and Muslims terrorists.
The ones who cheered when he mocked the disabled reporter.
The ones who ate up all the 'mean tweets'
If Trump had been able to do things like encourage people to take precautions, had tried to get aid and supplies to 'those people', had done anything the 'experts' said to do, his base would have gone bananas.
Keep in mind that these are the same people who booed him when he said he was vaxed & boosted and told them they should be too (note that he hasn't told anyone to get vaxed since then).
So in part, it would have been impossible for Trump to 'do the right thing' because he couldn't, but also because his base would have attacked him viciously if he had. And he knew it.