...the fact Putin preferred Trump to Clinton, or that he would even mention it publicly, is really no big deal. Both men have talked earlier of parallel ideas that makes that statement perfectly reasonable, and I would have made no big deal of it. But the fact that the Trump administration is making such extraordinary efforts to bury what is, to me, a perfectly innocent comment, sets all sorts of alarms off in my suspicious mind.

Its like Trump's claims that his inauguration audience was a real record-breaker; the fact he was mistaken about it is also "conceivably, an innocent mistake". The fact he raised such a stink about it, and continued to do so when presented with contradictory evidence tells a lot about how he thinks, and how he wants us to think.

The man is such a congenital, pathological liar that he does it when it is easily checked, and when he has no reason to do so, nothing to gain by doing it, and everything to lose by getting called on it.

Not to mention it gives his followers a lot of extra work cleaning up after him....and his enemies plenty of documented ammunition to use against him.