Yeah, I think a lot of people fall into the trap of looking only at the things he says rather than examining the things he does. Actions speak a lot louder than words, and a lot of what Kokichi's actions tell me is that despite everyone's feelings about him, he always had everyone's best interests at heart. A lot of what he did was in service to the group as a whole, even (and sometimes especially) if it threw himself under the bus in the process.

And, in the theme of trust, he expresses a lot of subtle vulnerability in his actions by leaving himself open to being throw under the bus in the first place. All while saying he doesn't trust anyone and neither should anyone else. He goes on that entire tangent about trust in the second trial, accusing everyone of hiding behind the word "trust," but what does he really mean by that?

The way I see it, it's less a critique of trust as a concept and more a critique of everyone else's misuse of trust as a concept. Wishful thinking and grandstanding about how you don't want anyone to be the killer to escape the very real truth that there IS one among you is dangerous and antithetical to true trust that all of you will be able to work together to isolate the threat.

Trust isn't in words, it's in actions, and sometimes that means trusting your friends to be able to resist scrutiny by proving their own innocence in order to irrefutably rule themselves out and isolate the true liar among them. THAT'S the kind of trust that Kokichi operates on, the kind that isn't afraid to get into a fight because you know in the end there's no hard feelings. He shows this in practice in how argumentative he is, but once the matter is resolved, he drops it like nothing happened (see: the Death Road of Despair, his whole Thing with Maki, and everything he says and does in the trials).

Honestly, I think it's a much more sustainable approach to what trust is and what it really means.