Trump administration bungled covid response because they cut funding for public health the first time he was in office making Covid in the US far worse than it should have been:

US underprepared for coronavirus due to Trump cuts from 2017-2019, say health experts.

US preparedness to deal with the threat of coronavirus has been hampered by the personnel and budget cuts made by the Trump administration over the past three years, according to health experts.

There is no one in the White House tasked specifically to oversee a coordinated government-wide response in the event of a pandemic, since the post of senior director for global health security and biothreats on the national security council (NSC) was eliminated May 2019.

The office was established in 2016 under Obama after the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa demonstrated the US government was not set up to move with the speed and decisiveness necessary to react to a really lethal epidemic.

The White House global health “czar” was supposed to coordinate international, national, state and local organisations, public and private, to confront a global epidemic, backed by the direct authority of the president.

After he became national security adviser, John Bolton eliminated the office as part of an NSC reorganisation, as he did not see global health issues as a national security priority.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/us-coronavirus-budget-cuts-trump-underprepared