Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Or as the case may be here, levels of egomania and egocentrism that are so extreme as to make the man act both like an asshole and like a moron on a daily basis; after a certain fashion he may be smart enough, but so blinded and obsessed with himself and his ego that he does moronic things and can't be bothered to put the least bit of effort into learning the job he was elected to do.

Actually, I guess you could argue that that means it IS more malice, or at least bad will, than stupidity. But what I'm trying to say is, it doesn't take a conspiracy to explain his behaviour. He's just never cared the least bit for the interests of the United States, he's never bothered to read up on the finer points of the American relationship with Russia, and he has learned during the past few years that he can do or say almost literally anything without losing more than some marginal amount of his Republican support. So he figured he could just be his usual self and focus on the only thing that mattered to him in the meeting with Putin - undermining anything that could possibly detract from the glory of his election victory by suggesting there might have been other factors than just the popularity of Donald Trump.

He clearly miscalculated on that one and realizes that by now. The question is whether the Republicans will finally go further than criticizing this as another of Trump's excesses, and admit once and for all that they've elected a spectacularly awful president without the least interest in properly performing the job, who should hence be sent off to his golf clubs as much as possible and kept far away from anything actually important.