This is fake news. Trump was one of the first Western leaders that reacted to COVID, closing the borders to China back in February. He was relentlessly mocked as a result, accused of being racist.
Edit: looks like some people disagree with facts.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/trumps-snowballing-china-t...
> On Jan. 31, the Trump administration declared a public health emergency for the novel coronavirus and announced travel restrictions to and from China, effective Feb. 2.
Its true that the problem was virtually unsolvable regardless of policy for pretty much every Western country (except a few small / sparsely populated islands), the virus started spreading way before it was detected, but that’s hindsight.
Donald Trump is literally on tape with Bob Woodward saying he deliberately downplayed it.
I'd say that this is the default behavior of majority of the population. Politicians do it probably even more. They just do not admit it.
You may argue that altruism is actually in self-interest, by making you feel good, but that’s circular logic[1].
[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Circularity
Not exceptions but ratio of altruistic vs self-centric actions would be I think less than 1%. That is based on my life time experience. Maybe somebody else has better one.
As for the world being a sad place: well it is. The amount of people in need is staggering.
the contradiction is that you give a pass for some people but not for donald trump only by pure political opinion.
But to humor you, here is a good summary from Olivia Troye, former Republican member of the White House Covid task force and aid to Pence: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/olivia-troye-whi...
Basically, Trump's only concern about Covid was how it would affect his re-election chances. And this isn't just some "disgruntled staffer". Basically everything she says backs up Trump's own public pronouncements of only seeing Covid as some politically motivated attack, instead of one of the most serious threats facing our nation in decades.
Trump has been extremely transparent that he only views events as how they will help or hurt him. That's a very fair definition of amoral to me.