I think you could have made your point without attacking my character. I think it would have made your post stronger too.

> The fact is, those other highly trusted authorities, both governmental and independent, were going to say the vaccine was safe anyway.

They were going to say the vaccine was safe if it was in fact safe. People feared Trump was going to say it was safe no matter the results, and then he would leverage the executive branch (CDC, FDA, NIH) to make that a reality. This fear of course was not unfounded, as Trump had been doing this very thing since day 1 of his presidency, when he ordered the National Park Service to doctor a photo of his inauguration to match his rhetoric that it was the biggest inauguration of all time.

It is true that Trump used these organizations for political ends, installed political appointees in those places that muzzled actual researchers and made recommendations contrary to public health interests (for example, the CDC position on meat packing plants, which changed suddenly due to political appointees getting involved in something that used to be apolitical). He ordered his administration to slow down testing to make case numbers look better. He touted Hydroxychloroquine as a "miracle cure", whereas today it's hardly even mentioned because it doesn't actually cure Covid. He put his own unqualified family members in charge of securing PPE, which of course was a disaster. He elevated an unqualified radiologist that he saw on Fox News to COVID advisor who was rebuked by his own colleagues for "[promoting] a view of COVID-19 that contradicts medical science." Taken as a whole, after all of that (and more), it's no wonder people were wary of him and his government claiming anything. Joe Biden or the Democrats didn't have to say anything to make people feel that way.

> "When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people, you're going to find more cases," Trump said. "So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.' They test and they test."

I mean, maybe Joe Biden and the Democrats were, but that's not what I've seen from "most people". I don't think most people play political games. Most people hate politics, but most people know when they're being lied to and gaslit constantly. In my reality, what I saw from people in my community was distrust in government for valid reasons. The way the Trump administration handled the pandemic left no confidence by Fall 2020 that they had our best interests in mind. That's not Joe Biden's fault or "the media's" fault.

> So you can't have your cake and eat it too and be all "haha, we were just kidding, why don't you think the vax is safe that's so weird".

There are still valid reasons to distrust the vaccine. I didn't take it until June and July because I wanted to see how things landed. I believe it's okay if people are still waiting because they just need more time to see how things play out. But that's not the reasoning I see from most antivaxxers I know. Their logic doesn't seem to be influenced by the reasoning that can be traced back to Democrats, or really any reasoning at all. Which Democrats were talking about microchips as a reason for distrust of vaccines? What media outlet was pushing that idea? Maybe you can argue Democrats created a general distrust and people filled in the blanks with whatever, but that seems tenuous to me.