A few things:

Trump has always been pro-vaccine. He put a lot of political capital into making the vaccines happen. Why so surprised that he now - completely consistent with that stance - recommends people take the vaccines he put so much energy into developing?

Which means... guess what! Those who support Trump do not necessarily agree with him on all issues. One of the abilities Trump has maintained as a politician is his ability to let his followers disagree with him.

I have never been a Trump partisan and did not vote in the last election, for a vote for Trump would have been a vote to continue many policies of his which I find unacceptable and most definitely unsupportable (e.g. support for the bloodthirsty house of Saud).

That said, as opposed to Trump - who allows for disagreement and encourages independent thought among his supporters - the current iteration of the Democratic party is very much against these traits. The Democratic party has set up a few litmus tests (absolute obedience to BLM, their Covid policy, and transgender ideology) which are now sacred to them. Disagreement is quite literally not allowed, thus the bans on all their controlled media.

Two quotes particularly strike me from what you print here:

“I would, I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly,” Trump said, adding that “we have our freedoms and we have to live by that, and I agree with that also.”

In other words, he thinks taking the vaccine is a good idea, but he respects those intelligent people who come to the opposite conclusion. Respecting differing opinions! Wow! Might that lead to... diversity??!!

"Trump and his wife, Melania, quietly received the vaccine while at the White House in January, according to reports earlier this month. Other political leaders have been vaccinated in public settings in order to encourage more people to get the shot once they’re eligible."

So he followed his own beliefs, but he left other people to make up their own minds. Same as the above quote.

This is your problem on the left right now: deep intolerance for diversity of opinion. As I said, I disagree with Trump on several issues, so I will not play fan-boy to him. That said, in this area (allowing for disagreement of people in good faith in the population) he is far preferable to the control-freaks on steroids who are currently in charge of the show.

Lastly, an interesting piece was published yesterday on here, which I now repeat. I find this fascinating because this is an argument against the current vaccination regime by a strong ideological proponent of vaccines.

https://www.afinalwarning.com/503588.html

There are many solid intellectual foundations for genuine concern about our current public health policy regarding Covid. Personally, I find it insane. This has nothing to do with anything Trump has said. I have reached my own conclusions.

Long story short, you are confusing correlation with causation. The two groups discussed here (Trump supporters and Covid policy critics) have a pretty good correlation. But in this case, Trump has not caused anyone to be a Covid critic. It just happens to be that many independent-minded intelligent people (whom he is willing to respect, as opposed to his enemies) also happen to find the reaction of the political classes to this respiratory bug to be dangerously irrational and completely unscientific - revealing their understanding of the word "science", which they throw around so much - as pathetic and self-serving.